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The Evolution 
Immortality 



WRITINGS BY C. T. STOCKWELL. 

NEW MODES OF THOUGHT. 

The New Materialism and The New Pantheism. Cloth, 
gilt top, $1.00 net (postage 7 cents). 

' 1 Here we have presented, in the most concise and com- 
prehensive shape, what has not hitherto come into print : 
the momentous trend of chemistry, physics, and philos- 
ophy to one and the same end." — Springfield Republican. 
" Here is a volume one should possess. Read the chap- 
ter, 'Begotten, not Created,' and you will thank the 
critic for calling your attention to the book."— Unity. 



THE EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY. 

Suggestions of an Individual Immortality based upon 
our Organic and Life History. Fourth edition: re- 
vised and extended. Cloth, gilt top, §1.00 net (postage 
8 cents). 

" One of the most suggestive and best developed es- 
says on personal immortality which later years have 
produced." — Literary World. " A thoughtful and sug- 
gestive treatise."— The Independent. " Well worthy of 
study."— The Critic. " A thoughtful book worth read- 
ing."— Atlantic Monthly. 



JAMES H. WEST CO., Publishers, Boston. 



The Evolution of 
Immortality 

Suggestions of an Individual Immor- 
tality Based upon Our Organic 
and Life History 



BY 

C. T. Stockwell 

Author of "New Modes of Thought : The New Material- 
ism and The New Pantheism," etc. 



JFourtfj lEtittton: IftebtseH attH (Extentieti 



BOSTON 
JAMES H. WEST COMPANY 
1906 



■£1 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Twt Copies Received 

OCT 9 1906 

Copyrifht Entry 
CLASS XXc, No, 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1887 
By Charles H. Kerr & Company 

Copyright, 1906 
By James H. West Company 



AMOS EMERSON DOLBEAR 
M. E., PH. D., LL. D. 
PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS IN TUFTS COLLEGE 

LONG TIME FRIEND AND SYMPATHETIC CRITIC 

WHOSE AGREEMENT I HOLD 
TO MEET ME AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS 
TO TALK OVER MORE FULLY THE GREAT MATTERS 
TREATED OF IN THIS LITTLE BOOK. 



Death has no power the immortal part to slay, 
Which, when its present body turns to clay, 
Seeks a fresh home, and with unminished might 
Inspires another frame with life and light. 

— Pythagoras, 

All that is, at all, 

Lasts ever, past recall ; 
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 

What entered into thee, 

That was, is, and shall be : 
Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay 
endure. 

— Browning, 

(8) 



Preface 



OEING convinced that an individual 
immortality lies outside of the realm 
of demonstration ; that it is a conscious- 
ness, a possession, an apprehension if any- 
thing, the aim of the writer as embodied 
in this little book is to make it merely 
suggestive. Should his work, therefore, 
prove helpful in this direction to any who 
may read, it will have sufficiently accounted 
for itself. 

There are two or three questions not 
touched upon in the body of the volume 
that will, quite likely, arise in the minds 
of some who give this line of reasoning 
careful thought, which I desire to mention 
here : 



io Preface 

i. If, as is claimed, self-consciousness 
is spirit birth, and the individual, from the 
point of attaining self-consciousness, is an 
immortal being, the question will very nat- 
urally arise regarding the destiny of spirit- 
ual embryos, or infants. In other words : 
Must the continuity of development re- 
main unbroken until the state of self- 
consciousness is reached before it may be 
said that an immortality is possible? In 
the case of infants, self-consciousness and 
self-determining powers have not emerged 
above the potential state. But as human 
life as we know it is potential in the em- 
bryo, so self-consciousness is potential in 
the unconscious infant. And right here 
is found a suggestion of an answer to the 
question. If the embryo is viable human 
life before actual birth, may we not believe 
that the infant, even before self-conscious- 
ness becomes an actual fact, has potential 
viable spirit? If the normal period of 



I 

I Preface 1 1 

physical gestation may be considerably 
shortened, and still the potential life of 
the embryo may be realized, why should 
we not suppose that a like law relates to 
the spiritual life ? 

2. It will also be noted that, assuming 
self-consciousness to be spirit birth, other 
forms of life, below man, may not possess 
viable spirit, and, consequently, do not 
have the quality or property of immortality 
common to man. Professor Le Conte, of 
the University of California, has written 
on this and similar points very strongly 
and convincingly, under the head of 
" Relation of Man to Nature," to which 
reference may be had to tbe advantage of 
such as are interested enough to pursue the 
matter further. In this connection, how- 
ever, it is an unimportant consideration. 

3. If it should seem to some that the 
element of a personal will has been over- 
looked in the conclusions arrived at, this 



1 2 Preface 

must result, as it appears to me, in conse- 
quence of a failure on the part of such to 
apprehend the full meaning of the term 
used so often, viz. : environment. By this 
term, in its largest sense, is meant the in- 
finity of spiritual forces that press down 
upon and around every human being with 
the constancy of gravitation itself. In fact, 
from the viewpoint of science to-day, all 
forces are spiritual forces, and the order 
and sequences of law are inseparable from 
any clear concept of God. 

The whole realm of morals lies between 
the inheritance of imperfection, on the one 
hand, and the perfection of the spiritual 
nature and being, on the other. As God 
— of whom by Gospel and by Law we are 
taught to say " Our Father " — is superior 
to any supposed devil ; as good is more 
enduring than evil — an imperfect good ; 
in short, as infinite spiritual forces are 
stronger than the imperfections that come 



Preface 1 3 

down to us by inheritance, so may our 
faith be as regards the ultimate destiny of 
that upon which these forces operate. We 
are indeed self-determining beings ; we are 
free to run counter to law ; not, however, 
to the injury of the law, for it mercifully 
and continually repays tithe by tithe, and 
will claim the last farthing. But the whole 
of life is an education, a discipline, which 
is calculated to result in that choice, that 
will, that action which is in harmony with 
the laws of Nature, which are, in them- 
selves, essentially spiritual. Law vindi- 
cates itself by its power to save, not by 
destroying. Law is our divinely appointed 
schoolmaster, and it is capable of justifying 
its appointment. It is appointed with a 
purpose and for an end ; and the divine 
ends are believed to be sure by the 

Author. 
Springfield, Mass., September, 1887. 



Contents 



PAGE 

Preface 9 

I. Introductory 17 

II. Of Embryological and Cell Life 20 

III. Of Life and Matter 38 

IV. Of Analogies 48 

V. Of Law as Manifested in Organic Evolution 60 

VI. Of the Fundamental Spiritual Identity be- 
tween Man and God in Point of Essen- 
tial Nature 71 

VII. Of the Origin and Evolution of Consciousness 81 
VIII. Of a Consciousness of Limitations .... 91 

IX. The Forward Look 99 

X. Discussion 106 

XI. Aftermath 142 



The Evolution of 
Immortality 



i 

Introductory 

IT may be stated, with little fear of contra- 
diction, that the two great questions ever 
uppermost in the minds of men are concerning 
God and Immortality. There never was a 
time, however, in all the history of the world, 
when the advanced or progressive thought of 
man with reference to these questions came 
so near centering upon a common plane as 
to-day. The pioneers of theology, philosophy, 
and science, having come up different sides 
of the mountain of thought and research, are 



1 8 The Evolution of Immortality 

now looking each other squarely in the face 
at the top. Each school is eagerly endeavor- 
ing, as never before, to compass the whole 
range of revelation. The time has come when 
science even claims its inherent right to deal 
with the questions. The age of strict materi- 
alistic science has passed, and the world is 
beginning to understand that there is a scien- 
tific method in dealing with things that do not 
pertain to matter alone ; that science, philos- 
ophy, and religion are divine handmaids of 
truth, with common aims and purposes, work- 
ing for the evolution of the common brother- 
hood of man. 

So much has been said and written in re- 
gard to the question of Immortality, that every 
conceivable shade of thought or speculation 
bearing upon it would seem to have been pre- 
sented. There remains, however, one line of 
suggestive thought which, so far as the au- 
thor's personal observation extends, has not 
been touched upon ; to briefly trace which is 
the purpose of this study. 

It would seem reasonable, at least, to sup- 



Introductory 19 

pose that we may gain some reliable data upon 
which to postulate a continued life by look- 
ing backward along the line of the actual 
past whence we came ; and, also, by a study 
of life itself as manifested by phenomena. 
" The history of the world," it has been said, 
" is the true premise upon which to postulate 
its future." If this be so, it would seem to 
be equally true with reference to man as an 
individual. If we may discover his organic 
history and his trend, in a broad sense, we 
shall come nearer an apprehension of his ulti- 
mate destiny. 

It is along this line of thought that atten- 
tion is invited. Let us drop out of mind, in 
the present work, all the commonly cited argu- 
ments in favor of an immortal existence, and 
thoughtfully observe any suggestive analogies 
that may be found in physical science, espe- 
cially in embryological and cell life, that may 
justly be considered as prophetic of a con- 
scious individual existence after what is called 
death. 



II 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 
THAT do we know of our own life his- 



" » tory ? What do we know of its origin ? 
It is not enough to say that we were born of 
this or that parentage, or at a certain time or 
place. This relates simply to an event, or to 
particular events in our history, and only to 
that part of it which appears at this stage of 
our being, this world of our existence. We 
have already lived in another stage or world, 
the embryological, and have been brought 
forth — born — from it into this. We, here, 
awake to a consciousness of selfhood and, at 
least, find ourselves related to an infinite past 
by an uninterrupted connection. Looking 
about us for further facts, we find that it may 
fairly be assumed that life, or the life-principle, 




Of Embryological and Cell Life 21 

is potentially and essentially the same in all 
past stages of our being ; that it made its own 
conditions and formed its own environments, 
having asked no questions of us ; that to be 
born or to die simply means, for the real iden- 
tity, a change of worlds or environments ; that 
birth and death are allied functions of life, 
each the act or event of the emergence of an 
identity from a lesser to a higher stage or 
circle of existence ; that one possesses, or ex- 
hibits, the quality of destruction no more than 
the other ; that birth marks the beginning of 
a definite stage of physical existence, while 
death is its closing act — and also an intro- 
duction to another and higher stage ; that the 
only difference between the now and then, in 
each successive stage, is that which results 
from growth or development, " the unfold- 
ment or evolution of a potentiality or germ- 
ality that each preceding stage possessed, 
although obscured from the sense perception 
of finite beings/ ' 

These conclusions are based upon general 
facts of physical science, and find very strong 



22 The Evolution of Immortality 

support in that part of our history that relates 
to embryological and cell life. Hence it would 
seem apparent that our life history affords a 
reasonable premise upon which to postulate 
future states. 

It may be pardonable if it is here stated 
that a personal study in this direction has led 
to that apprehension of the real meaning of 
life which is the true basis of a recognition of 
its possessing the quality of immortality. I 
do not think this too strong a statement. If, 
however, " our perception of one object con- 
tains a series of recognitions," we may not 
hope to make clear to others the validity of 
such recognition. Yet where demonstration is 
impossible, suggestions are often fruitful, and 
along this line it is proposed to notice here 
a few prominent facts that seem to be charac- 
teristic of antecedent stages, and which, in 
accordance with the laws of analogy and con- 
tinuity, seem to be prophetic in reference to 
future states of being. 

In order to understand the full import and 
significance of the embryological period, we 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 23 

must trace it back to its inception ; to that 
moment when it was "born." This occurred 
at the moment of molecular union or coales- 
cence of the nuclei of two simple cells ; sim- 
ple, and yet unfathomable with divine mystery, 
and containing the potency of all that we have 
been, are, and shall be. 

But have we reached here, in the union of 
two cells, the origin of our life history ? By 
no means. We may have reached a point in it 
when we can say that here begins our identity, 
or personality, as an individual material organ- 
ism ; but we have not reached the origin or 
completed the history of our life. Back of 
the embryological stands the cell life ; and 
back of the cell life stand the antecedents 
of cell life. Whence came these cells ? What 
are their functions ? And what is the rela- 
tion of one cell to the other ? These are ques- 
tions of very great importance. Especially is 
this true of the last, for, in this field, as in all 
others, "Knowledge is a perception of rela- 
tions." 

The embryological life, it has been stated, 



24 The Evolution of Immortality 

owes its immediate origin to the union of two 
living cells. Each of these cells, however, has 
had a distinct antecedent life history, and is 
capable of distinct functions. Neither of them 
alone is capable of assuming that higher ex- 
pression of life which is manifested by repro- 
duction. Either cell, left to itself, enters upon 
no higher form or stage of life. Let us, at 
this point especially, reverently view the facts ; 
for the histology, physiology, and functions of 
these cells are intensely suggestive of divine 
relations and creative power. Science has 
positively determined so little, especially with 
reference to the peculiar function of each of 
the two cells, that a very large range is left to 
mere inference. But in regard to the organic 
structure of each we do know, approximately 
at least, many things that, by the law of anal- 
ogy, give more or less force to certain infer- 
ences or conclusions. 

The paternal cell, for instance, is highly 
organized, and possesses the power of motion, 
and of locomotion also, to an extent; while 
the maternal cell exhibits an organic structure 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 25 

relatively minor in degree, and consequently a 
motion less peculiar to organisms is manifested. 
It presents rather the appearance, or more 
nearly the appearance, of matter in the mass 
or homogeneous state. The paternal cell is 
active, energetic, and apparently capable of 
acting upon the maternal cell and imparting 
to it an impulse, a "mode of motion," or 
power, that is inherently foreign to the latter, 
or that would, at least, otherwise remain latent. 
The maternal cell is, in many ways, suggestive 
of that phenomenon that is called inorganic 
matter ; while the paternal cell is equally sug- 
gestive of the life-giving principle, called spirit. 
In other words, the paternal cell seems to 
be the organized, vitalizing, life-giving agent 
which, acting upon the maternal cell, renders 
it capable of the resultant phenomenon of a 
higher form or expression of life. 

Some of our scientists state as their opin- 
ion, based upon a long and careful investiga- 
tion, that the paternal cell is the differentiating 
agent ; that the maternal cell represents the 
conservative element, while the paternal gives 



26 The Evolution of Immortality 

the impulse to change, or differentiation. In 
other words, the principle of inheritance — 
the first in the trinity of forces that stand back 
of and surround every individual being, gov- 
erning and controlling its destiny — is vastly 
stronger in the maternal element than in the 
paternal ; while in the latter is found repre- 
sented the second force of the above trinity, 
— the impulse to differentiate, or the power 
of adaptation to environment, which is the 
third force alluded to ; a trinity of forces, but, 
nevertheless, a unity. 

And here, between inheritance on the one 
hand and environment on the other, is, surely, 
a tremendous demand for a quality of force 
that, in its essence at least, shall be no less 
than spiritual. If we regard environment in 
its largest and deepest significance, as forms 
of spiritual forces ever pressing down upon us, 
then we may perceive a plan of immense prom- 
ise to the individual in the fact that each pos- 
sesses, as a primary endowment, that which is 
designed to be responsive to the touch of a 
universe of spiritual realities external to it. 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 27 

We thus gain the high vantage ground of su- 
supremacy over mere animal inheritance. It 
is a divine way outward and upward that is 
coeval with the beginning of the physical 
organism. 

Whatever the deeper law of unity may be 
that runs throughout the universe of phenom- 
ena, there seems to be, as an antecedent of 
such phenomena, a duality. In tracing the 
history of all phenomena we soon come to 
apparent duality — spirit and matter. And 
so this duality, or apparent duality, that stands 
back of organized matter is represented in the 
universe of organisms, and seems to stand 
back of the reproduction of organisms. 

At this point I should state the proposition 
in this manner : In the realm of causation the 
reproduction of organisms is dependent upon 
the united forces of the male and female ele- 
ments, in much the same manner as organized 
matter is dependent upon the united forces of 
— so called — spirit and matter. In other 
words, the essential division of the universe 
of organisms into male and female is in strict 



28 The Evolution of Immortality 

correspondence with the conception that posits 
spirit and matter as standing back of organized 
matter, or of organisms themselves. Thus 
we have here, to a significant extent, the 
poetical Genesis portraiture reproduced in the 
realm of physical phenomena. The maternal 
cell seems, largely at least, void of any form 
or suggestion of a higher order of life until it 
is " breathed upon " — quickened — by the 
paternal cell. But when this occurs, a new 
and higher form or expression of activity 
begins, called the embryological life. 

The history, therefore, of the present stage 
of our life — not our organism — can be traced 
back on a line of unbroken continuity to the 
commencement of the embryological stage. 
Here it seems to branch off into two distinct 
channels, whence it has descended. But if 
our analogy is true to the essential facts in 
the case, the two channels are, on the one 
hand, that of matter, and on the other, that of 
life or spirit ; and it is in the latter, the spirit- 
ual, that our true personality is to be found. 
The life - principle or spirit always remains 



Of Embryo logical and Cell Life 29 

potentially or in essence the same, while the 
forms and combinations of matter, — the body, 
— by which the life-principle expresses itself, 
are constantly changing. It is never, any two 
hours, or even two minutes, absolutely the 
same. As a suit of clothes is to the body, so 
is the body to the individuality or ego ; and it 
should " have consideration only as a phenom- 
enon which suits wants." " Body has its 
proper consideration when measured simply 
as a tool is viewed." Changing and change- 
able forms of matter per se cannot constitute 
personality. The " I Am " of any organism 
is something else than mere matter, at least 
as commonly understood. The simple ele- 
ments of matter that constitute the organism 
come and go continually, forming a current of 
atoms through every part of our bodies, leav- 
ing, however, the individuality untouched and 
secure. The life-principle remains essentially 
the same through all the varied changes and 
stages of our life history, back as far as it is 
possible to trace it. Hence, while the unity 
or individuality of our present stage of exist- 



30 The Evolution of Immortality 

ence seemingly emerges from duality, I hope 
to be able to add further evidence later on 
that it is only seeming, and that in reality it 
is, and also springs from, a unity. 

Returning now to the two cells upon the 
union of which the embryological stage de- 
pends, let us inquire whence they came, and 
what of their origin and antecedents. 

One thing at least is clear. Each of these 
cells has had a distinct life history. Each has 
had an inception, an unfoldment, and a death 
to preceding environments ; that death being 
its birth into a new world or stage of exist- 
ence. The maternal cell, for instance, was 
once an inhabitant of the ovarian world, and 
was born from it into the uterine world. The 
paternal cell has also a similar history. Thus 
we see that even cell life is dependent upon 
a pre-existing life. Trace cell life back as far 
as it may be traced, and we are still con- 
fronted by a pre-existing life. It should also 
be noted that the farther it is traced at each 
step, the evidences multiply that life — all life 
— has its origin in the spiritual life, God. 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 3 1 

The farther back we go, through one form of 
organism after another, through each succes- 
sive grade and system, we find life assuming, 
to an ever increasing extent, a form which 
declares its divine origin and essence. 

In this connection, however, an important 
fact should not be overlooked : The body, or 
organism, which the life-principle inhabits, and 
through which it manifests itself, is, in each 
successive backward stage, of a lower order ; 
and, furthermore, the manifestations of life are 
limited by, and dependent upon, the structure 
and complexity of the organism with which 
the life-principle has environed itself. Hence 
we catch a glimpse of the necessity of a con- 
stant succession of births and deaths, so 
called, if we are to progress endlessly, or have 
already entered upon a continuous, progressive 
existence. Viewed from the standpoint of 
physical science, to die — that is, to change our 
environment, to outgrow any given material 
world of limitations — is as much a neces- 
sity of growth as to be born. Death — a 
natural death — is, in fact, the culmination, or 



32 The Evolution of Immortality 

culminating act, of a given stage of existence. 
It is, in reality, simply a new birth ; a going 
forth of our real selves from organic limita- 
tions, or environments, that have become too 
restricted and are no longer capable of admin- 
istering to our real growth, into a new sphere, 
a larger world, a higher and more complex 
form of material organism, in which, and 
through which, the life-principle within may 
have a broader, deeper, and higher scope and 
range of manifestation. It comes about as 
the result of the inadequacy of the organism 
to adapt itself to the demands of an unfolding 
life. The same life-principle that wove into 
form the individual organism, lays it down 
again when it has served the purpose for 
which it was summoned into existence. 

" In death's unrobing room we strip from 'round us 
The garments of mortality and earth ; 
And, breaking from the embryo state that bound us, 
Our day of dying is our day of birth." 

This has been the course of the physical law 
of birth and death thus far in our life's his- 
tory. What reason then have we to suppose 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 33 

or fear that we have reached a point in our 
history when we are to pass under a new order 
or system of laws entirely the opposite in 
result ? Natural laws are not fickle or change- 
able; they are, rather, continuous and uni- 
form. 

As in the past all the forms of physical 
organization which our own life-principle has 
evolved for itself have been invariably from a 
lower to a higher, so we must infer that this 
self-same life-principle is now engaged, as it 
has always been engaged throughout the suc- 
cessive stages of its past development, in evolv- 
ing an organism through and by which it may 
hereafter express itself more in harmony with 
its own nature and essence. In other words, 
our present physical body stands in similar 
relation to the spiritual body to be, as does the 
placenta to the embryo, the graafian vesicle to 
the ovum, or the membranes of this cell to 
its nuclear content. When the placenta, the 
embryological body, dies, the embryo comes 
forth into this, to it, new and strange world 
of experience and unfoldment. When the 



34 The Evolution of Immortality 

graafian vesicle reaches maturity or has com- 
pleted its work, its product, the ovum, is born 
into a new stage of existence and environment 
in a manner strikingly analogous to the birth 
of the embryo. And so, in accordance with 
our analogy, when this physical body shall die, 
the spiritual body, its nuclear content, will go 
forth, freed from the limitations of its physi- 
cal being, into a new sphere of greater possi- 
bilities and larger scope, carrying with it the 
same life-principle which it has inherited from 
the great past, re-enforced and ennobled by its 
legacy of human experience and acquired con- 
sciousness, the priceless result of this stage 
of our existence. 

Let us now return to that point where it is 
stated that our identity as an individual or- 
ganism may be said to have commenced ; the 
molecular union of the two parent cells. The 
individual life of both cells is merged into a 
single channel, and a new form of life com- 
mences, namely, the embryological existence ; 
the highest function of which is to evolve a new 
and higher material organism or body. The 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 35 

vivified or quickened maternal cell does this 
work apparently unaided by any other than its 
own and its newly acquired force or powers, 
excepting that of environment, up to a certain 
time, when it seeks for aid — nutrition — from 
without itself. It first evolves for itself a 
body, called the placenta, by the aid of which 
the growth and elaboration of an embryological 
organization is carried forward. When this 
work is completed, or when a human body is 
so far evolved as to render the placental world 
too restricted, the body dies and it, the embryo, 
is brought forth into this world of infinitely 
larger scope and possibilities, relatively, than 
its former environment. 

Here death and birth are as essentially to 
to be found as anywhere, and the inference is 
plainly apparent. The body alone, having 
served its purpose, dies ; but not until another 
and more highly organized substitute is pre- 
pared to take its place as the home of the life 
or spirit that is undying and immortal. The 
same life-principle prepares for itself another 
and higher mode of expression. It is a unity 



36 The Evolution of Immortality 

or continuity of life. There never has been, 
nor will there be, another life ; it is the same 
life that has come down through the past, 
appears in this phase of its manifestation, and 
shall pass on into other and higher forms 
of material organization or objective expres- 
sion. 

For an analogy in our physical history we 
will return once more to the two cells, by the 
union of which ensues the embryological stage 
of our existence. The organic history of these 
cells, both paternal and maternal, can be traced 
back through what may be called a succession 
of births and deaths, or a bringing forth of 
the life-principle from one form of organization 
to another. The ovum or maternal cell has 
an inception, development, and maturity in the 
graafian vesicle or follicular body. From this 
body, when mature, it has a birth strikingly 
analogous to the birth of the perfected embryo. 
The graafian vesicle may therefore be termed 
the external body, or formative world, of the 
ovum, the ovum itself being the internal body, 
or the seat, or center, of the life of the vesicle. 



Of Embryological and Cell Life 37 

The graafian vesicle is, in turn, formed, devel- 
oped, and matured within its ovarian environ- 
ment. But the life-principle of each individual 
cell precedes all forms of material organization 
that can be traced. Back of each stage of 
organization, or material expression, stands a 
pre-existing organism that life has woven into 
existence. In fact the life of these cells may 
be traced back into the dim distance of infinite 
time, beyond even the marriage, so to speak, 
of spirit and matter. 



Ill 

Of Life and Matter 



l HE larger object of this study being to 



* trace the history of our own individual 
life, rather than of the organism, and to draw 
conclusions therefrom, we must not rest con- 
tent with following it back to a point where 
it first expresses itself in organic form. We 
can, however, merely glance at the general 
thought of the origin and nature of life. 

Were it possible for us to go back in imag- 
ination to the time when a " speck " of proto- 
plasm was first evolved from the long train of 
antecedent modes of creative energy, could we 
even then say that this is life ? By no means. 
We have what is termed " live " and " dead " 
protoplasm. We have protoplasm, it is true, 
wherever there is life ; but the most that can 




Of Life and Matter 39 

be claimed for it is that "it is the basis of 
life " ; the form in which life is first manifested. 
Life comes to it, and also leaves it. 

Granting that the entire phenomena of 
worlds and of the universe, the expression of 
life in all forms, are the natural and orderly 
sequence of matter set in motion, the question 
of the origin of life would still remain unan- 
swered. All that can be consistently claimed, 
in view of phenomena, is that it is an evolu- 
tion simply, or unfolding, of that which had 
previously been subjected to an infolding, or 
involution. Evolution implies an involution. 
An infolding must, in the very nature of 
things, precede an unfolding. And so, when 
life is spoken of as being the result of the 
evolution of matter, or of matter set in motion, 
it would seem to be a manifest absurdity. It 
would be nearer the truth to say that matter 
had, at some far off point of time, been sub- 
jected to an involution of life, and is now 
engaged in the consequent process of evolu- 
tion. 

In other words, as the sun, with its radiancy 



40 The Evolution of Immortality 

of life-giving energies, the requisite of living 
activities of all planetary life, is to this planet 
of ours, so is Deity to the whole universe of 
matter. Matter infolds, or involves, the Divine 
radiancy and, therefore, evolves, or unfolds, 
this stored radiancy ; the manifestations of 
which process we have been in the habit of 
calling life. I said that something like this 
would seem to be nearer the truth than the 
proposition that life is a property, or product, 
of matter. But science and philosophy do not 
allow us to-day to rest the matter here. The 
veil has been pushed aside so as to permit of 
a still deeper and more reasonable hypothesis 
relative to the mysteries of life and Deity. 

We have traced, or may trace, our history 
back — as all of life's phenomena must be 
traced — to the united energies, or oneness 
of God and Matter. I say oneness of God 
and matter. I do not wish to be understood 
as claiming that dualism is the ultimatum of 
this or any view. In the ultimate analysis of 
matter nothing will be found but Energy ; or, 
in another and equivalent word, God. This, 



Of Life and Matter 41 

at least, is a reasonable hypothesis, based upon 
the scientific investigation and deduction of 
the highest living authorities. If the entire 
material universe is now reducible to about 
seventy " simple elements," who shall say that 
this number may not be further reduced, even 
until the unit element is found ? A scientist 
remarked, not long since, that " the reduction 
of all the chemical elements to one, is, to-day, 
an entirely feasible hypothesis." All of our 
leading scientists will, I think, agree that dif- 
ferent forms of matter — so called in a popular 
sense — are really but "modes of motion" of 
energies, all of which are reducible finally to 
one common energy; that the " elements" 
will finally be found to be nothing but "a 
mode of wave motion," an expression of Deity. 
In other words, that "the elements are no 
elements at all, being simply phenomena aris- 
ing out of and going back into a primary or 
noumenon." Matter per se — that is, matter 
separated from, or independent of, its proper- 
ties — is not apprehensible to physical sense. 
Hence matter, as such, cannot reasonably be 



42 The Evolution of Immortality 

called a sensible substance. It is, as viewed 
to-day, far more suggestive of a unity of all 
being, than of a duality. The real would seem 
to be a noumenon, that which sub stands — 
stands under or back of — phenomena. But 
in speaking of matter as simply phenomena, 
w r e use words that are liable to be misunder- 
stood. I prefer to use the word Oneness, 
rather than any term that might imply that 
matter and Deity are distinct entities, one 
over against the other. The union or oneness 
is so complete that, if we say matter is God's 
organic body, or the form inhabited by Him, 
through and by which he manifests Himself, 
we should very nearly state the truth. The 
same idea may, however, be stated as follows : 
The universe of matter may be said to be God, 
if we remember that the Universe per se is an 
Infinite Organism, having an Ego, and that 
the ego is the real of any organism ; the thing 
itself behind phenomena. 

The scientist, when looking with analytical 
eyes at any form or combination of matter, be 



Of Life and Matter 43 

it a drop of water or an ocean, one of the con- 
stituents of air or the whole atmosphere that 
envelops him, a grain of sand or a mountain, 
an atom or wavelet of ether, or a star that 
floats upon the bosom of a boundless etheric 
sea, an asteroid or a universe of planets, sees, 
as the result of his analysis, " motion," motion 
of different kinds, degrees, " modes " ; but all, 
all, quivering, pulsating, vibrating in answer 
to an adequate touch. Where motion is found 
there must be will behind it ; where will is, 
there also intelligence is. And so there must 
be behind, or in, this universe of infinite 
motion an Infinite Will, an Infinite Intelli- 
gence, an Infinite Life, that by and through 
this infinite phenomenon of motion — life — 
is expressing an Infinite Thought. The uni- 
verse of matter then is, to us, a materializa- 
tion of a thought of God. 

If the scientist, awed by the immensity of 
his vision, calls the primal source of this won- 
derful manifestation an Infinite Energy, this 
is so because of his special education. If 



44 The Evolution of Immortality 

another, considering the same phenonenon, 
traces it to the same source and, in an ecstasy 
of soul, exclaims : Behold an Infinite God ! 
will the wise man intercept the current of 
uplifting and ennobling emotions in each by 
raising the insignificant question of terms to 
be made use of in the attempt to give expres- 
sion to that which is simply inexpressible ? 
If, as Goethe says, 

" 'Tis feeling all," 

then let the dogmatists enshroud it in such 
"cloud and smoke" as mere names imply. 
The vibrating feeling in the finite is the 
measure of his response to the motion of 
Infinitude itself. 

Let us recall attention, at this point, to 
certain phenomena that relate to the embryo- 
logical period, commencing with the molecular 
union or vivification of the maternal cell. 
Living, if we may so term it, for a time upon 
the material resources of itself, a segmenta- 
tion of cells takes place. Thus growth or 



Of Life and Matter 45 

development occurs, and the time arrives when 
external resources are necessary for the pur- 
poses of nutrition and support of its work. 
The supply is at hand, and is found in the 
environing mother membrane, with which a 
vital attachment is formed. Thus the embryo 
gains such material substances as are required 
to complete and perfect the material human 
organism or body. No mother, therefore, is, 
in reality, so entirely a mother, in a strictly 
exact sense, as is popularly supposed. She 
receives a life and, for a time, nourishes it, 
modifies it somewhat, and, when it comes into 
this world, environs it with her care, love, 
training, and so forth, then gives it back to 
itself and its author again, her work being 
done. Its real father, we may say in an essen- 
tial sense, is God ; while its real mother is, in 
a relative sense, Nature. Human parentage, 
then, is merely a channel through which for 
a time an individual life courses its way. Its 
lineage must inevitably be traced back to the 
mysterious but absolute unity or oneness of 
God and matter. 



46 



The Evolution of Immortality 



"Art Thou the Life? 
To Thee, then, do I owe each beat and breath, 
And wait Thy ordering of my hour of death 
In peace or strife." 

There is a more or less vivid recognition of 
this fact in the soul of every man and woman. 
From the deeper consciousness of every one 
there sooner or later arises a sense of sonship 
to God. We come to see and feel, in early 
life or later on, that human parentage is merely 
an instrument. That "my Father " means 
nothing less than God, and that " Mother'' is 
really another word for Nature. This con- 
sciousness of ours is, therefore, in perfect har- 
mony with the theory that traces life back to 
Deity, while the organism is referred to Nature 
or matter. This, however, does not necessarily 
imply a duality of origin, nor a dual individual 
nature, as may be apprehended by carefully 
studying matter itself, in the light of the 
scientific philosophy of to-day. 

Thus viewed, matter is seen to be purely 
phenomenal, arising out of and resolvable into 



Of Life and Matter 47 

a primary universal energy. And so man's 
present physical nature is transient, phenom- 
enal, unreal. The only real, the essence of 
being, is the spiritual. The spiritual sub- 
stands the physical, and finally eventuates 
itself as the ego, or soul, of the physical. 
From this point on through this stage of 
man's existence he has relations in a sense 
dualistic in condition : physical needs and 
spiritual needs. But in a larger sense there 
is even here no duality, but a unity. 

" All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps 
soul." 



IV 

Of Analogies 
*m 

IT is stated in Chapter II that the highest 
function of the embryonic stage of our 
being is to evolve a newer and higher material 
organism or body, which should better express 
the unfolding life - principle, the history of 
which we have endeavored to very briefly 
trace. If this be true, may we not, with con- 
siderable logical confidence, assume that the 
highest physical function of this stage of our 
existence is to evolve a still higher and more 
complex organism or body, in which and 
through which the divine spirit or life — our 
real personality — may become endowed with 
the possibilities of a higher, broader, and 
deeper expression of its own nature and in- 
herent essence ? Let us see what data there 



Of Analogies 49 

may be in our past history and present condition 
or state to warrant such an assumption. 

Attention is first called to an histological 
and physiological analogy. All cells present 
an external and an internal body ; an external 
membranous body and an internal nuclear 
body. The graafian follicle has a nucleus 
which, being evolved, and after it reaches a 
state independent of its follicular body, we 
call an ovum. This, in turn, is found to pos- 
sess an external and internal distinction or 
body. Being vitalized, or quickened, by the 
paternal life, its membranous, or external 
body, develops along certain lines, indicating 
a temporal existence, — placental, — while the 
germ-center or nuclear body develops into a 
state or form denominated a human embryo. 
The placental body dying, it, the embryo, is 
born into this stage of our existence, still 
being — according to the latest histological 
researches — a vaster cell, or a vitally con- 
nected unity of cells. This being so, is it not 
reasonable to suppose that our present external 
bodies possess analogous nuclear bodies which, 



50 The Evolution of Immortality 

in turn, shall also evolve into forms suitable for 
external bodies as we pass on one step more ? 

This is my analogy, and I am desirous that 
it be clearly understood. I will partially re- 
peat it. The graafian cell has a membranous 
external body and a nuclear inner body. The 
inner or nuclear body develops and is finally 
born from its internal environment — the 
graafian cell — into an existence independent 
of it. It is now called an ovum, and the 
follicular body which constituted its former 
external body dies and becomes entirely dis- 
organized, the life-principle having been trans- 
ferred to the ovum. The ovum, also, passes 
through almost identically the same or an 
analogous process of development in its or- 
ganic evolution. Its nuclear or inner body 
develops into an embryo, and leaves, finally, 
its external body, the placenta, and comes 
forth into a new environment, this world of 
ours in which we now live. Now, unless 
the laws of organic evolution cease to apply 
further, this external body of ours has an 
inner or nuclear body which is being, at this 



Of Analogies 5 1 

moment, developed, and will ultimately pass 
out of this external body which we see and 
know so well, into an existence as independent 
of it as we to-day are independent of our 
former placental bodies. There would seem 
to be left us but one of two inevitable conclu- 
sions : Either we pass on to a higher stage of 
organic evolution, independent of the present 
physical state, or the uniformity and continuity 
of Nature's laws no longer have application and 
relation to us as individuals. Either we con- 
tinue to live, or God's laws are mutable. 

If evolution, as some have claimed, relates 
simply to the perpetuation and gradual im- 
provement of the race, ignoring the individ- 
ual ; if, as the result of the infinite past which 
relates to the physical development of man, 
there is to be no spiritual consummation, 
then " nothing but the Infinite pity is suffi- 
cient for the infinite pathos of human life. ,, 

The prophetic eye of Emerson saw " the 
Universe represented in an Atom, in a mo- 
ment of time." We, assuredly, in the light 
of scientific philosophy, ought to be able to 



52 The Evolution of Immortality 

see the race represented in the individual. 
And if the same laws that relate to the uni- 
verse relate also with equal force to the atom, 
we must conclude that the operation of those 
laws which result in the evolution of the race 
applies as well to the units that compose the 
race. It is now generally conceded that evo- 
lution has reached the acme of physical devel- 
opment ; that, in the very nature of things, 
evolution, so far as man is concerned, must 
hereafter proceed along the lines of mental 
and spiritual growth. This is, therefore, an 
age when not only the grandest and most far- 
reaching thought and effort of man, but the 
inherent forces of Nature as well, seem cen- 
tered upon the problems of education and of 
character building; of, in other words, im- 
pressing upon and embodying in the individual 
a conception of the phenomenality of the 
physical and the reality of the spiritual. 

Man to-day, as never before, is endeavoring 
to work in harmony with the forces of Nature 
which "make for Righteousness"; and this 
is secured for the race only as secured by and 



Of Analogies 5 3 

for the individual. The individual is, there- 
fore, the one essential fact and concern. " It 
takes all mankind to make a man, and each 
man when he dies takes a whole earth away 
with him. ,, " It is to the honor of human 
nature, and what can be said of no other 
creature, that the best fruits of all together 
suffice for no more than to make each one 
what he may be." Once apprehend the fact, 
so prominently dawning upon the mind of 
the world to-day, that the spiritual is the only 
real substance in the universe ; that all phe- 
nomena must be accounted for upon a spirit- 
ual basis ; that the spiritual nature of man is, 
therefore, potential in, and emerges from, the 
physical ; that he is here undergoing a process 
of education and development — not " proba- 
tion and trial " — subject to the directing 
agency of a measureless and beneficent spirit- 
ual environment ; that Love, the very heart 
of Deity, holds him in a grasp as strong as 
the immeasurable sweep of gravitation, " the 
very muscle of Omnipotence " — a spiritual 
force, before the operation of which "no 



54 The Evolution of Immortality 

slightest rustle is stirred amid the quiet air " ; 
that as the result of this environment the 
spiritual nature of man is awakened and, 
finally, learns to express itself in those qual- 
ities of being that are termed " Godlike," 
"spiritual," and so forth, more apparent in 
some than others, but most common with 
those men and women who have established 
the most intimate connection with this real, 
subtle, spiritual environment — when all of 
these things are apprehended, the real sig- 
nificance of life, our own personal individ- 
ual lives, will be better understood, and the 
clearer will appear the reasonableness of the 
faith which holds that, apart from an immor- 
tality, life has no divine meaning. 

We see thus something of the possibilities 
that open before the vision of our souls. We 
have become self-conscious beings, and con- 
sequently immortal. The amount of immor- 
tality that we shall possess depends upon our 
self - determining power. Immortality need 
not be, is not, a question of time or place. 
It is measured rather by the terms of quan- 

I 



Of Analogies 5 5 

tity and quality, and is to be in us if any- 
where. In each individual man an immor- 
tality is inherent. It was germal at the most 
distant point of his physical history. It came 
to birth at the moment of self-consciousness. 
He is environed by an infinite immortality, 
and can lay hold, here and now, upon all that 
he will. " With man is power to make the 
kind of a world in which he elects to live." 
While content with the physical he necessarily 
lives in the basement of being. But there is 
sunshine and a purer atmosphere above him ; 
and, within him, however latent it may be, 
there is that which cannot permanently rest 
satisfied with the darkness and pestilential 
damps of a mere sense existence. 

Besides the power of this environment to 
drive him into the " upper stories," there comes 
also the compelling influence of a great com- 
pany of emerged souls who, having tasted of the 
founts of a higher life, are impelled thereby to 
go down into the highways and byways and 
compel those therein to move on and upward. 

Life is manifested by and through trans- 



56 The Evolution of Immortality 

formation, and the transforming process we 
mistakenly call death ; it is really the con- 
dition of an evolving life. Look at Nature 
all around and see if this be not so. As 
with the contained germ of an acorn which, 
properly conditioned, draws to itself and se- 
lects that which it requires for its growth, 
and in so doing breaks through and casts 
off its former sheath or body, so the char- 
acter of man and, consequently, the nature 
of his immortality, is determined on the prin- 
ciple of rejection and selection, by the ar- 
rest and fixation, the crystallization and con- 
version to use of those more than ethereal 
currents of inspiration, aspiration, sentiment, 
idealism, which so powerfully yet tenderly 
appeal to us, " woo and court us from every 
object in Nature, from every fact in life, from 
every thought of the mind," from every in- 
tuition of the soul. We must select and 
appropriate, like the oak, from the earth be- 
neath us and from the upper air of the invis- 
ible and immaterial influences that emanate 
from the all - pervading and all - environing 



Of Analogies 57 

" Over-Soul. " " The only way into Nature 
is to enact our best insight. " In doing this, 
" instantly we are higher poets, and can speak 
a deeper law." And thus also we are con- 
stantly being transformed from a lower to a 
higher life ; from a material to a spiritual 
plane. In dying as to the physical and being 
born spiritually is found the nearest complete 
solution of the problem of life as we know it 
here and now. 

He who has lived the most ; who has gone 
down the deepest and risen the highest in the 
range of human possibilities, will be the last 
to deny this assertion. Is it, then, within the 
range of reason to suppose for a moment that 
an Infinite Intelligence could plan and purpose 
from the beginning to cut off the subjects of 
his creation, and doom them to an extinction, 
at the point when a clarified consciousness of 
their being is just awakened ? " It is," says 
one, " related of an Arab chief, whose laws 
forbade the rearing of his female offspring, 
that the only tears he ever shed were when 
his daughter brushed the dust from his beard 



58 The Evolution of Immortality 

as he buried her in a living grave. But where 
are the tears of God as he thrusts back into 
eternal stillness the hands that are stretched 
out to him in dying faith ? If death ends life, 
what is this world but an ever-yawning grave 
in which the loving God buries his children 
with hopeless sorrow ? " Whatever may be 
said of the "inexorable logic of Love, ,, in 
reference to an individual immortality, any 
human being who has arrived at that stage of 
his unfoldment denominated self - conscious- 
ness — " spirit birth " — and knows something 
of the depth of meaning that is involved in 
the term, may, upon the moral basis of the 
inexorable logic of justice, demand an immor- 
tality. A human father is justly held account- 
able to his children regarding their physical 
wants. Is the All Father any less morally 
bound to meet and satisfy the spiritual hunger 
of his children, that spiritual hunger being the 
acme and fruition of all their past history ? 

By the logic of Love, by the logic of 
Justice, every self-conscious being must be 
given an opportunity to realize the possibili- 



Of Analogies 59 

ties of his nature, to satisfy those spiritual 
aspirations and ideals which, independent of 
personal volition, well up from his own inner 
being ; a consummation which every one knows 
demands an existence not vouchsafed in the 
physical stage of our being. 

But this conclusion may find a sufficient 
basis upon a lower plane : that of " a supreme 
act of faith in the reasonableness of God's 
work. ,, If God's work be reasonable, man 
must be immortal. To our faith we may also 
add the authority of science, if we adopt 
Professor Huxley's definition of science. He 
says : "To my mind, whatever doctrine pro- 
fesses to be the result of the application of 
the accepted rules of inductive and deductive 
logic to its subject matter, and accepts, within 
the limits which it sets to itself, the suprem- 
acy of reason, is science. ,, Professor Du Bois, 
with a still deeper insight, asks : " May we 
not define all science as the verification of 
the ideal in Nature ? " Can Nature have any 
reasonable meaning independent of a spiritual 
consummation ? 



V 



Of Law as Manifested in Organic 
Evolution 



FURTHER argument in favor of the 



assumption stated at the outset of Chap- 
ter IV is based upon the uniformity and con- 
tinuity of law, — as manifested not only in 
organic evolution, but in our own experiences 
in a mental or psychological sense. This is 
but the expression of, or name we give to, 
another and higher law that stands behind 
and above the more readily observed of 
Nature's laws. 

Let us apply this law to that made manifest 
in organic evolution, as it is expressed in our 
own life history in its various phases. 

Organic evolution exhibits the phenomenon 
of unity as the result of the process or career 




Of Law in Organic Evolution 61 

of Nature's laws. In all organisms, primal 
as well as ultimate, we find that the unit con- 
sists of aggregations of individuals. The unit 
cell is composed of molecules ; the molecules 
of atoms, and so forth. The higher and more 
complex organisms consist of an aggregation 
of cells, and thus on until man is reached, who, 
in an organic or physical sense, is simply an 
aggregation of cells, vitally connected, and com- 
posing, in this aggregation of units, a new and 
higher unit or individual. And here, in man, we 
have the organic ultimatum of that of which the 
unit cell is the prototype or original model. 

An aggregation does not destroy the indi- 
viduality of the unit presence. In a block of 
brick houses, for instance, the individuality of 
each separate brick is not destroyed by the 
aggregation or association which constitutes 
a new individuality — a block of houses. A 
unit brick is not a unit block ; and a unit 
block is more than a unit brick. But the 
larger unit does not destroy the smaller unit. 
Again, an aggregation of blocks may consti- 
tute another unit of a still superior kind — a 



62 The Evolution of Immortality 

city ; but the individuality of blocks, and of 
bricks, is in no-wise interfered with. Each 
unit or individuality serves its purpose and 
performs its proper function. And so the 
unity and individuality of each cell in man is 
maintained. Each cell possesses a function, 
an intelligence, a sense of need and a sense of 
satisfaction, peculiar to itself. Their mutual 
affinity, however, results in co-operative asso- 
ciation, and this co-operative association re- 
sults in, or composes, a higher and more 
complex organism as individual in its char- 
acter as the individuality of each single unit 
cell. Complexity of physical form leads to 
a higher manifestation of life, — intelligence, 
— intellectual modes, — psychic life. So that 
the essential difference between a monad 
and a man may be accounted for upon the 
basis of the difference in the complexity 
of the organic structure of each. Wherever 
there is organism there exists intelligence ; 
and the higher and more complex the organ- 
ism the greater is the intelligence — or mode 
of psychic motion — manifested. 



Of Law in Organic Evolution 63 

There can be no doubt that this is a gen- 
eral law of Nature. Whence, then, the reason- 
ableness of the supposition that this law of 
organic evolution goes no farther in the as- 
cending scale of our being? A given form 
and combination of matter (speaking in the 
gross sense) is canceled — dies — but no 
matter and no energy is lost. Physical sci- 
ence teaches this, if it teaches anything. 
Both are simply transferred; and the trans- 
ference of either, as we have seen in em- 
bryology, does not affect the personality or 
individuality of our real being, except as evo- 
lution or growth affects it. The line of con- 
tinuity of being is not interfered with, or 
destroyed. 

A continued life implies, in the very nature 
of things, growth ; growth in intelligence, 
growth in the power of apprehension, of the 
possibility of enjoyment and suffering ; growth 
of insight, growth of outsight ; growth of 
mind, growth of soul, growth of spirit. If all 
of this is a calamity, then, in the light of 
organic evolution, we are doomed to suffer it. 



64 The Evolution of Immortality 

But there is here implied a continual dying, 
so called ; a continual, incessant changing, 
every day and every hour of our existence. 
The only constant known to science is per- 
petual change. 

" Who thinks aught can begin to be which formerly was 
not, 

Or that aright which is can perish and utterly decay ? 
Another truth I now unfold ; no natural birth 
Is there of mortal things, nor death's destruction final ; 
Nothing is there but a mingling, and then a separation of 
the mingled, 

Which are called a birth and a death by ignorant mortals." 

Has it not always been so ? Does not our 
conscious experience accord with this law ? 
We all have had an existence in the embryo- 
logical stage, and have died to it, and been 
born from it into an infantile world. As 
infants we have died, and have been born into 
the world of childhood. We have died as 
children and been born as youth. To the 
youthful stage we have died, and most of us 
find ourselves at present in that changeful 
period of our existence denominated mature 
physical life ; while some are passing on into 



Of Law in Organic Evolution 65 

that stage called the evening of human exist- 
ence. Birth and death, or " a mingling, then 
a separation of the mingled,' ' surely marks 
our entire conscious course from the begin- 
ning. Some of us, who are parents, have 
lost, irrevocably lost, our infants, our children, 
our youth and, it may be, our young men and 
maidens. The Jameses and Janes, the Johns 
and Marys, as we call them still, are not what 
they were. Neither are they to-day what they 
will be to-morrow, next year, ten years hence. 
Still we call them our children ; or, in a deeper 
sense, ours. We scarcely notice that they 
are constantly dying, day by day, and, also, 
that they are as constantly being born again. 
We are parents — not of stationary, mechan- 
ical existences, but of processes of being ; 
parents — not of a single stage of existence, 
but of potentialities, and of potentialities that 
are constantly realizing, step by step, the un- 
ending possibilities of being. 

The same law also applies with reference 
to parents, friends, and all with whom we 
associate. Being absent from them, we carry 



66 The Evolution of Immortality 

their images in our memories. But in order 
to be convinced that our mental processes, 
called memories, are illusive and do not rep- 
resent the real, we need only to meet them 
again after a separation of a few years. Our 
fond imagery is shattered by a mere glimpse 
of the actual. Between the then and the 
now, our friend, our parent, who was, is not, 
and with him who is we must form a new 
acquaintance, much as if we had never before 
met. They are not what they were. We 
are not as we were. They and we are of 
what we were. The line of continuity is not 
broken ; it is simply extended, developed. 
The individuality is not lost, but, rather, has 
taken on larger proportions, become more 
individualized. 

So all of us can look back upon an experi- 
ence of a continual dying and a continual 
becoming. " The world of phenomena " — 
ourselves included — " is a flowing river, ever 
changing, yet ever the same." This is a 
matter of personal consciousness, or of self- 
knowledge, and it is in harmony with that 



Of Law in Organic Evolution 67 

part of our history which antedates our mem- 
ory, as revealed by science. 

Shall it continue in harmony with its past 
and present, or has it reached its last stage 
of development, and must it soon cease to be ? 
In the light of the continuity and uniformity 
of Nature's laws, we cannot believe it shall 
cease. Professor Huxley states that " the 
key of the past, as of the future, is to be 
sought in the present." If this be true, and 
we find that the one prominent feature of our 
past, as well as of our present, is a continued 
unfoldment of an inherent germal individu- 
ality, we have at least a strong argument in 
favor of the hypothesis that our future is not 
to be retrogressive. Our individual river of 
life came from the eternal beyond, on the one 
hand, and is passing on to the eternal beyond, 
on the other. It flows to-day; it did flow 
yesterday. Shall it not flow to-morrow and 
evermore? We can judge only by analogy 
and by law ; fixed, immutable law. 

This, however, we know : A law gave it 
inception. A law gave it the power of flow- 



68 The Evolution of Immortality 

ing. A law channeled it. A law, or laws, 
shaped and modified its career, making it what 
it is to-day. As the result of law we are 
floating upon its bosom. Give this fact deep 
thought. It is significant. We are floating 
on, moving down our own personal life-stream 
at the regnant behest of laws which are God's 
own expression of himself to the universe of 
mankind. Does not analogy, does not an 
intelligent conception of law, of God himself, 
declare that we must, that we shall, continue 
to move on, being borne forward on this 
current of life which constitutes our own 
personal stream or line of continuity, over 
which we have little power to change the 
general course, which no power of ours can 
stop, and to which we can successfully op- 
pose no barrier ? 

Yes, in organic evolution we discover a law, 
or parallel laws, that may, and apparently do, 
pass over from the material into the imma- 
terial. Before physical birth, the activities of 
life appear in the processes of perfecting the 
structure and completing the harmony of 



Of Law in Organic Evolution 69 

function. Consciousness and volition lie dor- 
mant, or in an unawakened slumber. The 
spiritual nature is, as yet, simply germal. But 
at birth new forces are brought to bear upon 
the latent potentialities, and a connection is 
established between the child and spiritual en- 
vironments — the first being that of parental 
love — which are as immeasurable as the very 
heart of God. Heretofore, physical laws have 
held universal sway ; but now, spiritual laws 
step in and contest the field with the physical, 
asserting an ever increasing claim upon the 
work of future development. Self-conscious- 
ness is evolved, together with a knowledge of 
other beings of like nature around us, and 
of a Supreme Being over all. In short, the 
spiritual nature is awakened — born — and 
man is a new creature. He is no longer a 
physical being simply, controlled by physical 
laws and subject to a mere physical end. A 
spiritual nature has emerged from the phys- 
ical, and now becomes the center and focal 
point of forces that are to constitute an ever 
increasing control over the unfoldment and 



70 The Evolution of Immortality 

destiny of the individual. It is an evolution, 
not a new creation. The dividing line be- 
tween the physical and the spiritual can no 
more be definitely drawn than can the exact 
division between the animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, between the " organic and inor- 
ganic worlds. " The physical merges into the 
spiritual in a manner similar to the mergence 
of childhood into the youthful stage, or of 
youthhood into manhood. The various stages 
of our being, from its inception to the pres- 
ent, and from the present onward, come about 
as the result of the ordinary working of laws 
that have been constant in all the past history 
of the world, and that cannot by any analogy 
or principle be for a moment supposed to 
cease to act as we pass on or out of this stage 
of our existence to that of future stages. 



VI 



Of the Fundamental Spiritual Identity 
Between Man and God in Point 
of Essential Nature 

TPHE foregoing assumption, namely, that 



* the highest physical function of this 
stage of our existence is to evolve a still 
higher and more complex material organism, 
— a spiritual body, — is further based upon 
the utter impossibility of conceiving how mind 
can have any existence independent of matter, 
so called, in some form ; how consciousness 
can be without organs of sense, how organs 
of sense are possible separated from an organ- 
ism ; how an organism can have any being, 
however simple or complex, independent of 
something to organize. We may as well 
attempt to conceive of the existence of God 




72 The Evolution of Immortality 

independent of creative activities — that is, 
independent of matter in some of its infinite 
variety of forms ; or of intelligence without 
thought, as to conceive of life separate from 
some form of expression. The very term itself 
implies activity, creative energy ; and " life as 
manifested in the organism is seen to be only 
a specialized form of the Universal Life." 

Therefore, taking as our starting-point the 
premise that life — our own life — had its 
origin in God ; that its mode and method of 
expression are dependent upon matter ; that 
all phenomena connected w T ith life's history 
in the past are traceable directly and solely 
to this mysterious oneness of God and matter, 
we must inevitably conclude that the same 
immutable law, ever evolving and widening in 
its scope, is related as persistently to our 
future as it has been to our past existence. 

Here, also, our hope and expectation of an 
individual immortality finds further support. 
We, as individuals, derive our life from the 
Infinite Life and, consequently, constitute a 
part of the Infinite Life. The relationship 



Of Identity Between Man and God 73 

is thus seen to be, in reality, that of parent 
and child. Our life also expresses itself, 
as does the parent life, — the Infinite, — 
through, and by means of, so called matter. 
Herein is manifested something of our " like- 
ness " to God ; and herein we, like Him, are 
also a oneness of life and matter. That is, 
the life-principle and the various combinations 
of matter that constitute an organism, or 
physical body, form, in reality, an individual 
unity. Or, viewing matter as simply object- 
ive, we, in the subjective sense are, solely and 
simply, life, and a part of the Infinite Life. 
It thus appears that there is a fundamental 
spiritual identity between man and God in 
point of essential nature. 

Can Deity die, in the sense of becoming 
extinct ? If so, then we can die. If He 
cannot die, how can we ? 

But it is now not infrequently said that we 
may return to the source of life like the con- 
templated ultimate return of the planets to 
their original source, and some one may ask : 
What in this event becomes of our individu- 



74 The Evolution of Immortality 

ality ? My reply is that the analogy is not a 
true one. Planetary matter returning to its 
source, sun-matter, may lose its individuality 
as a material planet ; but an individual life, 
cycling through infinite time and space, is 
quite another thing ; by this individual expe- 
rience in time and space it gains at least an 
immaterial individual consciousness. My con- 
sciousness is not yours, and it can never be 
yours. Each attains to a consciousness of 
life, or self-knowledge, — that is, is individual- 
ized by his own peculiar world of experience 
and inheritance. We to-day are individuals, 
possessing self-consciousness and self-deter- 
mining powers ; and any one who looks deep 
into the trend and course of the general life 
of the human race must, it would seem, see 
clearly that the universal tendency of life, in 
its outlook at least, is, in the very nature of 
things, in the direction of a greater individual- 
ization of the individual. Externally the ten- 
dency is, undoubtedly, toward the unity of 
the race as a race ; but internally this simply 
means a unity of aggregated individual units. 



Of Identity Between Man and God 75 

" Whoever lives is individual, 
Without a copy or a precedent." 

To illustrate : In the physical realm of 
Nature we begin with the individual cell. 
The next stage is that of a community of 
individual cells. Finally, by the processes of 
development, or evolution, an organism re- 
sults, which consists of individual units vitally 
connected so as to form a larger unit. With 
the human race, we call this larger unit Man. 
But this law of organic evolution does not 
stop with the development of the physical. 
It is the same throughout the entire realm of 
phenomena. It passes over into the imma- 
terial, and builds up political, social, and moral 
institutions in almost precisely the same man- 
ner as physical organisms are formed. 

In the political aspect of the world the 
start is also with the individual or unit. Then 
follows a community of units ; the town, for 
instance. The same law of development, or 
community of vital interests, results in the 
organization of counties, States, and Nations ; 
each a political organism, with functions pe- 



j6 The Evolution of Immortality 

culiar to its specific plane of being or place 
in the body politic ; but all, when perfected, 
working harmoniously together for the com- 
mon good and the equal rights of the units, 
the individual men and women that form the 
organism or political body. This same law 
of progressive development also foreshadows 
the time when there shall be a confederacy 
of nations, a political world-organism, a race- 
unity, the highest function of which shall be 
to secure to the race-unit — Man — the free- 
dom of a fair chance in the exercise of his 
inalienable right to preserve and enhance his 
inherent individuality. 

The same law applies in social, moral, and 
religious realms. There is first the unit, the 
individual man ; then a community of units. 
These units come to feel that, in order to 
preserve and enhance their individuality in 
the social, moral, and religious aspect, it is 
necessary to form a vital association, co-oper- 
ative in its nature. Hence social, moral, and 
religious organisms result. The unit finds 
himself under the power of some external ad- 



Of Identity Between Man and God 77 

verse conditions, or environments, and thus 
seeks, or forms, an aggregate commensurate 
to his need — an institution, a larger unity. 
The unit institution is soon followed by an 
aggregation of institutions, and thus a higher 
plane of unity of institutions is reached. 
Each institution becomes an integral part of a 
larger institution, there being no end, nor shall 
there be any, to this ascent from institution 
to institution, from unity to unity, until an 
"absolute institution " is reached that shall 
embrace "an infinite community of souls, 
including the inhabitants of all worlds that 
have evolved human beings since the be- 
ginning; an institution become perfect and 
divine." "Thus immortality is presupposed 
by all the instrumentalities of civilization " ; 
and "the completion of spiritual life in the 
communion of all souls is the final cause or 
purpose of immortal life." "An institution 
eliminates from itself the defects of the in- 
dividuals composing it, and in turn helps 
the individuals to free themselves of defect 
through it." 



78 The Evolution of Immortality 

" A people is but the attempt of many 
To rise to the completer life of one ; 
And those who live as models for the mass 
Are singly of more value than they all." 

And so " each shall help all — a finite act ; 
all shall help each — an infinite act. Each 
one thus participating in the infinite, invisible 
communion of souls shall thus be made infi- 
nite and divine. Hence the Invisible Church 
of all immortal spirits becomes the Institution 
whose eternity is as divine as the Creator's. " 
Herein a glimpse may be caught of the out- 
come of organic evolution, the fundamental 
law of which is the co-operative association of 
individual units, a law universal in its scope, 
reaching from atoms to man. 

Thus we trace our individual life history 
back to its source, the Infinite Life. It mys- 
teriously emanates, or is detached, therefrom, 
and assumes particularity, in a physical sense, 
in the cell organism — an individual unit. In 
the ascending scale of the organic evolution 
of this unit-life, we find an aggregation of cell 
units, vitally connected, forming a larger unit, 



Of Identity Between Man and God 79 

the human physical organism. We next find 
this larger unit, man, the summit of phys- 
ical creation, rising into a self-conscious, self- 
determining being. As the next stage of 
organic evolution, his consciousness of exter- 
nal conditions and relationships results in the 
" institution " ; which is " a unity of persons, 
and endowed by them with personality." And 
thus, in his progress, he passes over from the 
material or physical into the mental and spir- 
itual realms of his being, becoming an integral 
part of the endless aggregation of institutions 
which include " all intelligent beings through- 
out the universe — an eternal stream of crea- 
tion — especially after death has removed the 
dividing limits that separate souls of one 
planet from those of another." Life — your 
life and mine — is thus seen to express itself 
by the laws of evolution and continuity of 
organisms, commencing with the physical, 
passing over into the mental and spiritual, 
resulting in an integral part of the Infinite 
Organism, the universal Oneness of all be- 
ing. 



8o The Evolution of Immortality 

In this sense we may say : " As is the 
atom to the universe of matter, so is man to 
Deity." We also may thus recognize " self 
as a part of a universal whole, yet a something 
forever separate and individual." The indi- 
viduality of experience, of consciousness, of 
inheritance, of apprehension, remains, forming 
a community and communion of individual 
souls that shall constitute an immortal social 
union of the universe of intelligences. From 
God, to God, — by the only way known to 
Law or Gospel : co-operative association — 
each for all and all for each — the Golden 
Rule. Here we touch the realm of ulti- 
mates. 



VII 

Of the Origin and Evolution of Con- 
sciousness 

RETURNING again to the embryological 
stage of our history, and drawing upon 
the two prominent composite physical facts 
connected therewith for an analogy, we may 
say that one of the composites, matter, is 
divided into two more or less distinct classes ; 
namely, the formed and the forming, or, more 
properly, the evolved and the evolving bodies. 

In the early stages of embryological life 
the play of life's forces is chiefly engaged in 
evolving the external body, — the placenta, 
— which we term, later on, the formed or 
evolved embryonic body. When this is ad- 
vanced or largely accomplished, the forming 
process more especially relates to the embryo 



82 The Evohition of Immortality 

itself. This process, so active before birth, 
is not completed until long after birth ; until, 
in fact, we have reached that period in our 
present physical stage called maturity — mean- 
ing, of course, only physical maturity, the 
noon of the day for the human body. After 
this, the afternoon sets in, and eternal night 
is our fast approaching doom — unless our 
analogy is significant ; unless life's forces, 
which in all the past have never ceased to 
work in a creative or evolving sense, shall con- 
centrate their energies upon the higher work 
of forming spiritual bodies, which shall serve 
as the homes of the ever evolving, undying 
spirits we call and know as our real selves. 

Evolution is recognized to-day as the great 
law that relates to the entire physical uni- 
verse. " Why, in truth, should evolution pro- 
ceed along the gross and palpable lines of 
the visible, and not also be hard at work 
upon the subtler elements which are behind — 
molding, governing, and emancipating them ? " 
If by evolution we have come into the pres- 
ent stage of existence, through successive 



Of Consciousness 83 

stages of organic life from the great past, 
why may we not, by the operations of the 
same eternal law, continue to evolve or rise 
through " succeeding phases of an endless 
life" ? Unless this be true, the spark of life 
— given of God, if indeed it be not a part of 
God- — goes out. Unless this be true, then 
our highest aspirations and deepest conscious- 
ness are deceptive and play us false. For, 
as we approach, and, more especially, as we 
pass, maturity in the physical sense, we be- 
come progressively conscious of living more 
exclusively in the mental and spiritual world 
of our being and nature. We become more 
and more conscious of the positive limitations 
of our physical environment ; that by these 
externals we are barred and fettered from the 
full exercise of powers, and from the capabil- 
ities of apprehension and enjoyment that well 
up within our inmost selves at times when 
the physical seems less dominant. We know 
that our bodies are mortal, and that the weak- 
nesses and ills that trouble them are prophetic 
of " modes of exit." But great souls feel that 



84 The Evolution of Immortality 

they " can get on " without these physical 
bodies ; that these hinder the full expression 
and activity of their essential selves. 

Somehow, for some reason inherent in hu- 
man nature, the vast majority of the human 
race feel, or sense, to a greater or less extent, 
the existence of Deity, spiritual things, and 
immortality. How is this fact to be ac- 
counted for? for it is a fact as real as the 
existence of the chemical elements of hydro- 
gen, oxygen, carbon, and so forth. To very 
many, the objective reality of the sun to their 
own subjective consciousness is no more real 
than are spiritual things, or facts. In the 
light of physical science it seems to be per- 
fectly legitimate to claim that all our senses, 
both physical and spiritual, have a common 
origin in environment. It appears to be a 
reasonable scientific hypothesis that " environ- 
ment so acts upon an undeveloped organism 
as to produce first a feeling. This feeling, in 
process of time, results in the evolution of 
organs of sense. Through, or by means of, 
these organs of sense sensation is evolved, 



Of Consciousness 85 

and, in like manner, we finally become con- 
scious beings, and know the reality of the 
objectivity of our environment ." Herbert 
Spencer forcibly shows the truth of this po- 
sition regarding the origin and evolution of 
sense organs. It is a law that can hardly 
be denied. The eye, and all that the organ 
of sight reveals to our consciousness, is de- 
pendent upon and directly due to the object- 
ive reality of the sun. " The fact that fishes 
in water that comes under the direct action 
of the rays of the sun have well developed 
eyes, and the other fact that fishes living in 
the waters of the Mammoth Cave do not have 
organs of sight, well illustrate this law." 
Change the environment, and the conditions 
correspondingly change ; the first become 
sightless and the latter sight-seeing. " Both 
classes were primarily endowed with the pos- 
sibility of seeing, but the reality of sight 
depended upon environment. " The fact that 
any have sight is thus correlative proof of 
the objective existence of the sun. The same 
is true with reference to all the other sense 



86 The Evolution of Immortality 

organs. The primal organisms possessed 
simply the possibilities of sense and con- 
sciousness, but the evolution of sense organs 
and, consequently, of consciousness, is due 
solely to environment. Heredity, adaptation, 
and environment — the trinity of forces be- 
fore alluded to — " seem to be the creative 
forces that result in man's present physical 
condition. In other words, certain objective 
forces operating through vast periods of time 
have determined man to be what we see him 
to be at present. " 

The significance of this physical fact, in 
this connection, is that "for every fact in 
the physical constitution of man, there is a 
corresponding creative fact or force in the 
environment which has been for countless 
ages operating upon him and making him 
what he is." If he sees, there must be 
" light." If he hears, there must be vibra- 
tions that produce "sound." If he is capable 
of being impressed through any of the phys- 
ical sense organs, then he is, and must have 
been, for long ages, touched by an objective 



Of Consciousness 87 

reality outside of himself. In other terms, 
the " seeing " and " feeling " prove the ex- 
istence of corresponding objective realities. 
" Men know nothing and can know nothing 
of what does not touch them. ,, 

Now, if this be true in regard to man's 
physical nature, have we not here a glimpse 
of the laws that result in the origin and evo- 
lution of his spiritual nature? Do not the 
physical and spiritual laws run in parallel 
lines ? Are they not, rather, one law ? Were 
there no real spiritual objective forces, is it 
reasonable, even in the light of physical laws, 
to suppose that man would have developed 
any spiritual apprehension of Deity, of spirit- 
ual things, of immortality ? No one who 
at all carefully investigates the histories of 
the evolution of man's physical and spiritual 
natures can fail to see that both run along 
perfectly parallel lines. Environing realities, 
outside of him, so act and react upon him 
as to awaken sensation, and sensation finally 
results in a consciousness of the objective 
realities. It is true that we may " feel " with- 



88 The Evolution of Immortality 

out possessing a knowledge of what produces 
the feeling. But the fact nevertheless re- 
mains, " that for every essential fact in man's 
nature (both physical and spiritual) we have 
a corresponding creative fact or force in his 
environment." We may hear without under- 
standing all the intricacies of wave-currents 
or vibratory motion ; but we could not hear 
did not wave-currents exist as an objective 
reality. The same is true of seeing, smelling, 
tasting, and feeling ; each sense has a corre- 
sponding reality of environment adequate to 
its development ; and the development of 
these sense possibilities of the embryo clearly 
reveals " the nature of the forces that act 
upon it." 

Admitting this to be a universal law of 
organic and sense development, it necessarily 
follows that the almost universal sense of 
aspiration for, and confidence in, the realities 
of a continued spiritual existence beyond the 
realm of physical limitations, " has come into 
existence as the correlate of certain spiritual 
realities, and that it has been made to be what 



Of Consciousness 89 

it is, rather than something different, by the 
facts of environment/ ' That is, our spiritual 
sense is as really the result of spiritual object- 
ive realities that environ us, as is the sense of 
sight the result of the objective reality of 
the sun. Thus, in the light of science, the 
"feeling," or subjective consciousness, may 
be cited as reasonable proof of the existence 
of an objective reality which is the counter- 
part of such feeling or consciousness. The 
office of physical sense organs in man is to 
reveal to the ego the relation it sustains to 
the material universe. They are "the eyes 
of the soul as it looks earthward upon the 
phenomena of Nature " ; and they have no 
relation with things external to his physical 
nature. They all pertain to the organism 
that soon or late breaks up and disappears 
from the realm of sense. They are of the 
external alone, the cerebro-spinal system of 
nerves that " knows nothing but what it 
collects to itself from the outside.' ' Not so 
with the spiritual system of perceptions. It, 
like the ganglionic nervous system, "has its 



90 The Evolution of Immortality 

meaning entirely within itself." It reveals to 
the ego — the selfhood of man — its relation 
to the immaterial. 

This point might be elaborated to an indef- 
inite extent ; but I have said enough to make 
it sufficiently prominent in this connection. 
I wish to recall, however, right here, Professor 
Du Bois' definition of science : " The verifica- 
tion of the ideal in Nature." It certainly has 
to be considered with facts and their relations, 
— which is science. 



VIII 

Of a Consciousness of Limitations 

T SHALL refer to only one other significant 
* fact connected with our embryonic history ; 
but it is one that seems immensely suggestive 
if taken in connection with its counterpart in 
our present stage of being. I allude to what 
may be called a consciousness of limitations 
on the part of the embryo during the latter 
stages of its embryonic existence. I need 
not enter into details to define what is here 
meant. Those who have given the subject of 
embryology any study, or even a little thought, 
must know to what phenomena reference is 
made. The peeping of a chick, for instance, 
together with the greater or less exercise of 
other newly found organs or members, for 
days prior to its rupture of its shell and its 



92 The Evolution of Immortality 

passage out of its restricted and confining 
environment into this new and infinitely larger 
world which surrounded and included the old, 
has its counterpart in all embryological life, 
and especially so of the human race. What 
is this if it be not the sure evidence of an 
awakening consciousness, on the part of the 
embryo, of the possession of powers and 
capabilities that require a freer range and 
scope than the limitations of its present en- 
vironment render possible ? We now know, 
as the result of a larger measure of apprehen- 
sion of the totality of things, that this con- 
sciousness of limitations, manifested by the 
embryo, is but the merest suggestion of the 
reality that awaits it when it shall emerge from 
the old placental body, that can no longer con- 
tribute to the evolution of the inherent powers 
and forces that constitute its life — the real 
personality from the beginning. 

This embryonic consciousness of limitation 
has its counterpart, I claim, in our present 
stage of being. Emerson's quiet reply to the 
Second Adventist : " Well, suppose the world 



Of a Consciousness of Limitations 93 

does come to an end ; it would not trouble 
me any. I think I can get on without it," 
is the same consciousness — in kind — as the 
peep of an unborn chick. The difference is 
simply one of degree. Both are prophetic of 
that which is to be. 

If it be claimed that this is not conscious- 
ness, in any true sense of the term, because 
we have no memory of our embryonic state, 
the reply may be made that consciousness is 
something else than mere mechanical mem- 
ory. Who can remember anything of his 
first year of physical existence ? What, it 
may be asked, is the difference between the 
consciousness of a child a week before birth 
and a week after birth ? or, even, six months 
before and six months after birth ? Con- 
sciousness, like everything else, is a matter 
of growth, of evolution. Who of us can tell 
when it began in his own case ? Who is 
ready to say that he is as conscious as he 
ever will be ; that his consciousness is not to 
continue to grow and unfold endlessly ? If 
the term " embryonic instinct " should suit 



94 The Evolution of Immortality 

any possible critic better than embryonic con- 
sciousness, I would ask : What is instinct if 
it be not slumbering memories, or an unawak- 
ened consciousness that comes down to us as 
the result of an inheritance out of all the life 
that has been lived before us, to which no 
age, no human being, has failed to add his 
contribution ? 

"Our finest hope is finest memory." 

Up to the point of physical birth the results 
of all this experience and life of the ages 
before us lie slumbering in that state we term 
" instinct " ; or, rather, before birth, it does 
not emerge above it. But at birth our inher- 
itance begins to crystallize into consciousness 
and self-determining power, a point whence 
an individual immortality becomes possible, if 
not indeed inevitable. If the Eternal Source 
of phenomena is the same as that " which in 
ourselves wells up under the form of con- 
sciousness," as Herbert Spencer puts it, we 
surely have arrived at a point in our unfold- 
ment when we possess that which is, in its 



Of a Consciousness of Limitations 95 

very nature, immortal. Consciousness, then, 
is " a graduated scale without a zero, having 
no starting-point from which a reckoning can 
be made," unless we say that it was potential 
in the absolute beginning of our existence, 
and is the fruition of all that has preceded 
our present stage of being. As the rose is 
potential in the germ, so self-consciousness 
and the spiritual nature of man must be the 
result of an unfoldment of that which, from 
the first, was inherently and potentially pres- 
ent. If a great past precedes its present 
state, then, according to the laws of evolution 
and continuity, a great future is before it, 
toward which it ever reaches forth and act- 
ively and unceasingly proceeds. The con- 
sciousness of the temporal nature of this 
stage of our existence prompts and impels 
an effort to subordinate the physical to the 
mental and spiritual, and keeps prominently 
before the mind the fact that the realities of 
life, in a relative sense at least, lie beyond the 
physical. 

Rightly and broadly viewed, both physically 



g6 The Evolution of Immortality 

and metaphysically, this consciousness of lim- 
itations is a sure and sufficient evidence of an 
ultimate broader and deeper realization of life 
beyond this stage of our existence. It is 
more than the first faint flush of the morning 
that precedes each new day. In embryonic 
life any marked manifestations of a conscious- 
ness of limitations do not appear until the 
later stages of that life. The same is true 
in this stage also, to a greater or less extent. 
In childhood, youth, and early maturity life's 
vital forces find full play in perfecting the 
material organism and preparing it to perform 
its full function as an organism. At these 
various stages the consciousness of limita- 
tions relates to an undeveloped physical or- 
ganism. We look forward to the time when 
we may hope to possess better developed 
bodies, brains, and so forth, through and by 
which to realize our ideals and give expres- 
sion to the true inner life that continually 
asserts itself, crying for more room and a 
larger scope and range of activities. But as 
we pass physical maturity, and the evening 



Of a Consciousness of Limitations 97 

twilight of this stage of life sets in, " Nature 
relaxes the bonds and pressure of vitality, in 
order to reconcile her children to the pros- 
pects of the coming change/' We then begin 
to realize that even a slight approximation 
toward a full realization of life's highest 
ideals — ideals that in our best moments 
seem native to our inner being — implies a 
continued life, a more perfect organism, a 
state of being freed from many things that 
now seem to be, in a very decided sense, 
limitations. 

If we may reasonably conclude that this 
sense of physical limitations, of which we are 
so often conscious, is but the magnified coun- 
terpart of a like consciousness that is charac- 
teristic of the later stages of all embryological 
existence, we may as reasonably believe that 
it is now, in our own case, no less prophetic 
of future realities ; that it, also, is but the 
merest suggestion of the nature and scope 
of possibilities and unfoldment that await us. 
That our present embryonic spiritual being 
shall, also, when the physical can no longer 



98 The Evolution of Immortality 

serve it nor longer be conducive to its devel- 
opment, pass out from physical restrictions — 
whose domination now hampers its free scope 
and range of inherent possibilities — endowed 
with an organism better suited to its new 
environment and more commensurate with an 
unfolding of its divine nature and essence, — 
this surely is a reasonable deduction from the 
laws and processes of Nature. 
What shall be 

" When eternity affirms the conception of an hour 99 ? 

The fact that we cannot now apprehend or 
know is, of itself, " an immense promise of 
coming enlightenment. ,, We may rest as- 
sured, however, that " the things not seen are 
eternal." But because they are now unseen 
they need not be called supernatural. The 
spiritual must be the fruition or flowering of 
the physical, not only real but substantial to 
adequate perceptions. And so we may wisely 
and confidently exclaim, with the poet : 

" He that hath led me hither 
Will lead me hence." 



IX 

The Forward Look 

FROM this viewpoint, we are not to sup- 
pose that, as we pass on to the next stage 
of progressive existence, we have reached the 
consummation. Standing here and looking 
back with all the aids at our command, along 
the line whence we came, we fail to discover 
the beginning or the successive stages through 
which we have already passed ; so, in looking 
forward, we fail to catch even a glimpse of 
the end. 

The spiritual body being, however, a unit 
organism, composed of some form of matter, 
— a mode of motion, — it also must be change- 
ful in form and combination, in accordance 
with laws pertaining to matter. Should it be 
composed of the elements of universal ether, 

L OF C. 



-loo The Evolution of Immortality 

or should the external organism which our 
life - principle, or spirit, is to inhabit in the 
next stage be composed of a higher or finer 
quality, arrangement, or mode of motion of 
matter than that of which our present bodies 
are composed, it would simply pass under 
higher and more complex laws than any that 
we now know as pertaining to the grosser 
forms of substance ; and it would carry with 
itself the adequate senses of perception of 
objective realities external to itself. "Birth 
gave to each of us much." Why then may 
we not reasonably assume that " death may 
give us very much more, in the way of subtler 
senses to behold colors we cannot here see, 
to catch sounds we do not now hear, and to 
be aware of bodies and objects impalpable at 
present to us, but perfectly real, intelligibly 
constructed, and constituting an organized 
society and a governed, multiformed State " ? 

Edwin Arnold has written that which so 
well harmonizes with this thought, it seems 
fitting and appropriate to quote. He says : 
" Where does Nature show signs of breaking 



The Forward Look 101 

off her magic, that she should stop at the five 
organs and the sixty-odd elements ? Are we 
free to spread over the face of this little 
earth, and never freed to spread through 
the solar system and beyond it ? Nay, the 
heavenly bodies are, to the ether which con- 
tains them, as mere spores of sea-weed floating 
in the ocean. Are only the specks filled with 
life, and not the space ? What does Nature 
possess more valuable in all she has wrought 
here than the wisdom of the sage, the tender- 
ness of the mother, the devotion of the lover, 
and the opulent imagination of the poet, that 
she should let these priceless things be utterly 
lost by a quinsy or a flux ? It is a hundred 
times more reasonable to believe that she 
commences afresh with such delicately devel- 
oped treasures, making them the groundwork 
and stuff for splendid further living by the 
process of death, which, even when it seems 
accidental or premature, is probably as natural 
and gentle as birth ; and wherefrom, it may 
well be, the new-born dead arises to find a 
fresh world ready for his pleasant and novel 



102 The Evolution of Immortality 

body, with gracious and willing kindred min- 
istrations awaiting it, like those which provided 
for the human babe the guarding arms and 
nourishing breasts of its mother. As the 
babe's eyes opened to strange sunlight here, 
so may the eyes of the dead lift glad and sur- 
prised lids to ' a light that never was on sea 
or land ' ; and so may his delighted ears hear 
speech and music proper to the spheres be- 
yond, while he laughs contentedly to find how 
touch and taste and smell had all been fore- 
casts of faculties accurately following upon 
the lowly lessons of this earthly nursery ! It 
is really just as easy and logical to think such 
will be the outcome of the * life which now is/ 
as to terrify weak souls into wickedness by 
medieval hells, or to wither the bright instincts 
of youth or love with horizons of black annihi- 
lation. 

" Moreover those new materials and sur- 
roundings of the farther being would bring a 
more intense and verified as well as a higher 
existence. Man is less superior to the sensi- 
tive-plant now than his re -embodied spirit 



The Forward Look 103 

would probably then be to his present person- 
ality. Nor does anything except ignorance 
and despondency forbid the belief that the 
senses so etherealized and enhanced, and so 
fitly adapted to the fine combinations of ad- 
vanced entity, would discover without much 
amazement sweet and friendly societies spring- 
ing from, but proportionately upraised above, 
the old associations ; art divinely elevated ; 
science splendidly expanding ; bygone loves 
and sympathies explaining and obtaining their 
purpose ; activities set free for vaster cosmic 
service ; abandoned hopes realized at last ; 
despaired-of joys come magically within ready 
reach ; regrets and repentances softened by 
wider knowledge, surer foresight, and the dis- 
covery that though in this universe nothing 
can be 6 forgiven/ everything may be repaid 
and repaired. In such a stage, though little 
removed relatively from this, the widening of 
faith, delight, and love (and therefore of virtue 
which depends on these) would be very large. 
Everywhere would be discerned the fact, if 
not the full mystery, of continuity, of evolu- 



104 The Evolution of Immortality 

tion, and of the never ending progress in all 
that lives towards beauty, happiness, and use 
without limit. To call such a life < Heaven 9 
or the ' Hereafter/ is a concession to the 
illusions of speech and thought, for these 
words imply locality and time, which are but 
provisional conceptions. It would rather be 
a state, a plane of faculties, to expand again 
into other and higher states or planes ; the 
slowest and the lowest in the race of life 
coming in last, but each — everywhere — 
finally attaining. After all, as Shakespeare 
so merrily hints, ' That that is, is ! 9 and when 
we look into the blue of the sky we actually 
see visible Infinity. When we regard the 
stars of midnight we veritably perceive the 
mansions of Nature, countless and illimitable ; 
so that even our narrow senses reprove our 
timid minds. 

" If such shadows of the future be ever so 
faintly cast from real existences, fear and care 
might, at one word, pass from the minds of 
men, as evil dreams depart from little children 
waking to their mother's kiss ; and all might 



The Forward Look 105 

feel how subtly wise the poet was who wrote 
of that first mysterious night on earth, which 
showed the unexpected stars : when — 

" ' Hesperus, with the hosts of heaven came, 
And lo, Creation widened on man's view ! 

Who could have thought such marvels lay concealed 
Within thy beams, O Sun ? or who could find — 

Whilst flower and leaf and insect stood revealed — 
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 

Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife ? 

If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ? ' " 



X 



Discussion* 



HERE are one or two points in the fore- 



* going pages where a fuller elaboration of 
the general line of the main argument may 
be advisable, especially because, from two or 
three sources, there have come questionings 
regarding the validity of some of the conclu- 
sions drawn from the basal analogy presented 
in the earlier chapters. 

Let it be understood at the outset that the 
analogies themselves are not called in ques- 
tion by these writers of high scientific attain- 
ment. The queries arise as to the validity of 
the full extent of the conclusions that have 
been drawn therefrom, relating especially to 
the matter of the continuity of self-conscious- 

* Appendix to the Third Edition (1890). 




Discussion 107 

ness and the connection that exists between 
what are called the " first " and " second " 
parts of the book ; the " first " part ending, 
from this view, with Chapter IV. 

Says one : " The continuity of self -con- 
sciousness is, of course, the whole point. 
Without that there is no immortality. Your 
argument I would state thus : Our life history 
shows us that every entrance to a new stage 
is preceded by a death ; shall not, then, the 
death of the present envelope also be the 
prelude to another stage ? This can only be 
answered in the affirmative. The analogy 
seems sound and, as you enforce it, most con- 
vincing. Now, then, — and here is the point, 
— shall we take over our consciousness into 
that new stage without break of continuity ? 
Here the analogy breaks down. We have 
not done this in the previous stage. There 
has been no such continuity of consciousness 
in the past. Why should there be in the 
future ? But you would reply, I take it, 
there has been no self-consciousness to take 
over heretofore. That I admit is a sufficient 



108 The Evolution of Immortality 

answer. But, that being the case, what help 
does the analogy give us ? As in past changes 
we have left behind many, if not all, of the 
things which belong to the past stage, why in 
the coming change should we take with us 
anything of this, and why should self-con- 
sciousness be the exception ? If we leave all 
else, why not that ? Please note, I do not 
deny the conclusion ; I think it is sound, and 
you make a strong case for it. But I think 
your most convincing reasons are not due to 
your analogy ; are not much reinforced by 
it even. The connection between first and 
second parts is not, to my mind, very cogent. 
To me the convincing part of your argument 
begins where your analogy ends. The life 
history has passed from stage to stage with 
a ' death ' at each threshold ; but with us self- 
consciousness, mind, moral responsibility, have 
come into the field, and they mean something. 
The tendency has been always toward the 
supremacy of mind, and at last self-conscious 
mind has become embodied in matter. Here 
we recognize development under purpose to 



Discussion 1 09 

a certain end, and we see the end, — self- 
conscious individuality. Thus we see that the 
development is to proceed along this line. 
The physical development has gone to the 
rear. Now all of this, I think, is in your 
book, or to be read between the lines. But 
as I read it I did not find myself deriving any 
help from your analogy, or even referring to 
it. I had cut loose from it. It seems to me, 
then, that the whole point at issue, whether 
self -consciousness is to endure, is not touched 
by your analogy, because in past stages such 
consciousness did not exist. All we can say 
upon that basis is that certainly this stage 
cannot be the end. There must be another. 
There it leaves us. To go further we need 
other views. These other views you use and 
use well, but you leave your analogy behind." 

From another writer — a man who for 
many years has been a most devoted and con- 
scientious student and teacher of the physical 
sciences — comes a statement, much of which 
so nearly coincides with the above that to 
quote would be superfluous. The main point 



no The Evolution of Immortality 

of significance in this letter, as in the other, 
is the agreement that man, judging from his 
life history, " may have various modified exist- 
ences " in the future as in the past, including 
the plainly implied intimation that such exist- 
ences are to be progressive. 

If in this connection freedom were permis- 
sible to speak of personal opinions, motives, 
and so forth, it might be stated that, to the 
mind of the writer, the analogy referred to 
does not seem to be the strongest nor the 
most convincing part of the argument or sug- 
gestions embodied in this little volume. To 
his apprehension, there are other parts as 
suggestive, if not more so. Chapters VI and 
VII, "Of the Fundamental Identity of Man 
and God " and " Of the Origin and Evolution 
of Consciousness," are considered as, at least, 
equally suggestive. No proof was attempted. 
All that was claimed for any part was that of 
suggestion merely. And so this friendly crit- 
icism, coming as it does from such high 
sources, and in this frank and kindly spirit, 
is most highly appreciated. This is especially 



Discussion 1 1 1 

true inasmuch as it expresses more fully what 
has been less clearly indicated by a few re- 
views, suggestive of a slight misapprehension 
of the purpose and purport of the argument 
as a whole. 

It is freely admitted that one may stand on 
higher ground than that of a mere analogy or 
series of analogies ; that, to many, such may 
seem almost a hindrance. There are those, 
however, and perhaps a larger number, who 
are impressed most by such views. They are 
thus, it may be, led to catch a hint of the 
underlying purpose in Nature. But with the 
intuitionist, the conditions are otherwise. He 
stands upon a plane of being where the 
master - word of science — evolution — does 
not mean as much as it does to many. 

One of the objects aimed at in the volume 
was to yoke the analogies and intuitions to- 
gether, in the belief that true analogies and 
true intuitions are not antagonistic. There 
should be harmony, and, it is believed, there 
is harmony, and relationship, between all the 
facts of human history and present being. 



H2 The Evolution of Immortality 

More than this ; it is assumed that our ideals 
are real forecasts and foreshadowings, the 
evidence and assurance that proclaim the 
evolution of the future. This must seem all 
the more clear, however, if it can be demon- 
strated that these ideals are in harmony with 
science and based upon its foundation facts ; 
if it can be made apparent that these ideals 
are in accord with ' ' such a trend and ten- 
dency in the past as bespeak a greater and 
illimitable future." 

Certain biological students, who confine 
themselves strictly to the immediate facts of 
organic evolution, seem to see more that is 
convincing in the analogies. And so, — to 
quote from a reviewer, — the " strength" of 
the whole argument, to such, " is in its foun- 
dation upon accurate knowledge of the phys- 
iology of man, and its construction upon that 
basis of the spiritual edifice of the aspiring 
human soul, made for life evermore." 

So much with reference to the " connection 
between the first and second parts." 

In turning now to the most important as- 



Discussion 113 

pect of the question proper, let us first note 
a significant point of agreement between the 
two scientific teachers and writers who have 
just been quoted. One says, " He [the indi- 
vidual man] may have various modified exist- 
ences." The other writes, — referring to the 
analogy, — " All we can say upon that point 
is that certainly this stage cannot be the end. 
There must be another/ ' 

If it be conceded that we " may have vari- 
ous modified existences " in the future, or even 
" another,' ' why not an endless series of stages ? 
and also always, as in the past, an ever ex- 
panding and more complex state or form suc- 
ceeding each preceding stage ? The analogy 
referred to certainly indicates that this is to 
be the case ; and here also we as certainly 
have a hint of an ever-unfolding purpose, and 
also of the direction of the unfolding. 

This conviction is strengthened when we 
catch even a glimpse of the result of the op- 
eration of those methods of force that are 
termed involution and evolution, and still more 
so as we begin to apprehend the process of 



114 The Evolution of Immortality 

the action of these two sources or channels 
of divine energy. 

In relation to the question of the continuity 
of consciousness, it must be conceded that we 
did bring into this stage all the consciousness 
that had been acquired or evolved during the 
embryonic period. Only a biologist, perhaps, 
can apprehend the nature or quality of con- 
sciousness here alluded to. Once recognize, 
however, that, " Inherent in every atom of 
matter there is the Eternal Force, the Divinity 
which carries it on and up " ; that " power and 
purpose ride upon matter to the last atom," 
and it will be easier to perceive that each cell 
that constitutes an organism of any kind pos- 
sesses a degree of independent psychic life or 
sentiency that may be considered as the sub- 
stratum of the consciousness that is manifested 
by the aggregation of cells composing the em- 
bryo. The wonderful and complex manifesta- 
tions of psychic life in even micro-organic forms 
fall little short of, and are hard to distinguish 
from, consciousness. But if we admit the 
necessity of dividing the process of develop- 



j 



Discussion 115 

ment of consciousness into a series of stages 
consistent with present powers of apprehend- 
ing phenomena, the classification may be stated 
as follows : living matter, psychic life, con- 
sciousness, which in turn becomes the substra- 
tum of self-consciousness. Here we have a 
glimpse of the various steps of our own his- 
tory, connecting the present stage with that 
represented or expressed in the germal state. 
But it should be remembered that these divis- 
ions are more arbitrary than real ; that no act- 
ual or exact lines of separation can be traced. 
It is rather a growth, a merging of each into 
the succeeding. 

Sentiency is first manifest in free proto- 
plasm. Reference is here made to the germ- 
plasma of the primitive cell or ovum ; in other 
words, to young or forming ova before fertiliza- 
tion, and even before it may be said that they 
have evolved for themselves " bodies.' ' In this 
stage they present the general features of amoe- 
boid cells. But even here, sentiency appears, 
constituting a foreshadowing, a prophecy of 
what we recognize as consciousness and ego- 



n6 The Evolution of Immortality 

istic individuality. It will be noticed, also, 
that the expression used, a sentence or two 
back, is manifest, not origin. For sensation, 
wherever found, is, in the last analysis, an in- 
ward effect of external causes ; the subjective 
state resulting from creative objective realities. 
" Universal spirit is cause, universal matter is 
effect." But it will be essentially correct to 
say that protoplasm is the seat of conscious- 
ness. The nervous stmcture, were it void of 
protoplasm, would manifest no sentiency. The 
nerves embody the sentient agent — the pro- 
toplasm. Or, rather, it would be more accu- 
rate to say that they become the body through 
which, later on in the process of protoplasmic 
evolution, sentiency and consciousness are man- 
ifested ; for in the earlier stages of the history 
of ova, before any nervous structure is evolved, 
the germ-plasma of the nucleus of the cell rep- 
resents in itself a very intricate microcosm, 
the distinctive constituents of which are the 
chromatin elements, a system of strands, coils, 
or loops which preserve a very thorough defi- 
niteness and whose essential behavior is — 



Discussion 117 

mark the fact — like that of minute individ- 
ualities, exhibiting, strangely enough, " an alto- 
gether marvelous architectural function. " 

A further very striking fact is that, in this 
state, there is manifest in the protoplasm a 
freedom of movement and a sentient activity 
which do not exist after it has built for itself 
a body. It may be said that it seems to de- 
scend into matter for the purpose of repro- 
ducing itself, or for self-amplification, in order 
to rise to a higher plane of life that stretches 
away before its inherent potentialities. To 
quote late joint authors : " So it is with ova, 
which though at first often resembling various 
forms of amoeboid cells, tend more or less 
quickly to pass into the encysted phase. The 
protoplasm no longer flows out in irregular 
ever-changing processes, but is gathered up 
into a sphere, rounded off, and surrounded by 
a more or less definite envelope. This tran- 
sition, from a state of relative equilibrium be- 
tween activity and passivity, to one in which 
passivity undoubtedly preponderates, is asso- 
ciated with an increase of nutriment and re- 



1 1 8 The Evolution of Immortality 

serve products. The ovum feeds, becomes 
heavy with stored capital, becomes less active, 
and in consequence more encysted. " 

Among the first phenomena exhibited by 
the fertilized germ-cells, or ova, is that of a 
division into two main lines of developments, 
— that of body-building and that of reproduc- 
tion ; or, in other words, that of body cells and 
that of reproductive cells. Hence we have, at 
the very outset, a wonderfully suggestive fact 
relative to the probabilities of individual as well 
as of racial evolution. As the result of recent 
biological investigations, observers seem to be 
rapidly coming to the conclusion that the germ- 
cells are not the product of the body, as has 
been supposed, — " at least not in their most 
essential part, the specific germ plasma." On 
the other hand there exists almost conclusive 
evidence that there is an immortal chain of 
sex-elements from generation to generation, in 
all essential ways not unlike that found in the 
life of protozoa, where there is no body, and 
consequently no death. " Natural death occurs 
only among multicellular organisms, the single- 



Discussion 119 

celled forms escape it." " Death, we may thus 
say, is the price paid for a body." Neverthe- 
less, it is to the body-forming process of organic 
evolution that we are to look for biological 
evidence of individual persistence. 

In human development the process has been 
" from undifferentiated protoplasm on the one 
hand to undifferentiated protoplasm on the 
other " ; from the germ-plasma of the germ- 
cell to the gray matter of the brain, on the 
material side, and from cell sentiency to self- 
consciousness, on the spiritual side of being. 
Hence the higher state of egoistic life and con- 
sciousness comes to birth in and through the 
evolved protoplasm found in the human brain, 
the gray matter. The original germ-plasma 
feeds on, or appropriates, nutrient matter, thus 
segmenting or amplifying itself, and storing up 
the product in the brain cavity of the body 
which it has evolved. And here, like a plate 
of metal prepared for the storage of electricity, 
the elaborated protoplasm is capable of appro- 
priating, storing, individuating from those spir- 
itual qualities which environ it on every side 



120 The Evolution of Immortality 

and which press down upon it with the con- 
stancy of a Divine Love. Thus protoplasm 
per se 3 not " bodies," would seem to be the 
matrix, the womb, in which the inherent resi- 
dent forces of the sex-elements, supplemented 
by environing influences, elaborate and bring 
to birth ego. Marvelous as is cell sentiency, 
more marvelous still is egoistic- or self-con- 
sciousness. If, before the phenomena exhib- 
ited by the former, we stand in awe and w T onder, 
here we are speechless. 

True it is that, during the embryonic period, 
self-consciousness had not become a part of 
our being. It had not awakened from its sub- 
merged, prenatal, gestative slumbering in the 
great womb of Nature. It had not and did 
not come to birth for some years after physical 
birth. It may, however, be assumed with great 
positiveness that the various manifestations 
that are characteristic of the later stages of 
embryonic life, and which I have termed em- 
bryonic consciousness, constitute a forecast of 
the advent of ego ; and that when it came we 
experienced spiritual birth, and began to live 



Discussion 121 

in a spiritual world. We then, for the first 
time, apprehended or discovered our own per- 
sonal identity, and began to " retire into our- 
selves and become conscious of our own nature 
and of its high destiny. " Before this event 
every sense of want or need related simply and 
solely to the physical. 

Up to self-conscious man, development was 
guided purely by the sense of physical needs. 
No animal had an instinct, a passion, a propen- 
sity, or appetite which did not have reference 
to physical sustenance, defense, or propaga- 
tion. But with man as a self-conscious being 
comes an enormous over-plus of powers, if for 
the accomplishment of such ends only. This 
fact should have recognition and be accorded its 
full weight of suggestion and significance. It 
not only introduces one into a new and hereto- 
fore unrealized world of being, but points out 
the course of future development. Heretofore 
consciousness was directed outward. Now, to 
the external world is added the internal, and 
he finds that the latter is, really, his own world. 
He learns that "consciousness is subjective; 



122 The Evolution of Immortality 

knowledge is objective." He begins to realize 
the significance and grandeur of the thought 
of the seer and poet, which led him to exclaim : 

" Oh, mighty love ! man is one world, 
And hath another to attend him." 

At the moment of self-consciousness our 
separation from the merely physical began. 
Before that moment we were the subjects, 
chiefly, of such physical forces as relate to 
the mineral and vegetable kingdoms, and 
were spiritual beings only in a potential sense. 
From that moment our destiny, to an extent 
that never existed before, rested in our own 
hands. We then became responsible beings, 
and could choose our environment, or, at least, 
react upon it, and make it subservient to our 
own conscious ends. We could then select — 
a function transcending physical nature, and 
peculiar solely to those organisms which have 
risen above the merely physical ; we could se- 
lect forms of sustenance that are conducive to 
either the lower or higher life, the material or 
spiritual states of being. 

At that very moment we became " new 



Discussion 123 

creatures, " indeed and in fact. If " old things " 
had not altogether "passed away," a new ele- 
ment, a new force, came to birth in our being, 
— that of self-will, the power of self-determina- 
tion, the sense of relationship and responsibil- 
ity. " The moment the first trace of conscious 
intelligence is introduced, we have a set of 
phenomena which materialism can in nowise 
account for," says John Fiske. With self-con- 
sciousness awakened in our being, a new day, 
a new world, broke upon our almost affrighted 
vision. The momentous realities of our being 
began to dawn upon us, engrossing the mind 
with fitful images of life's true meaning. It 
then began to dawn upon our minds that we 
had come from the eternal past ; that into eter- 
nity we could trace our inheritance. We dis- 
covered with amazement that, potentially or in 
embryonic form, we existed in the fire-mist or 
nebula, in even that " oneness " of ethereal sub- 
stance before differentiation began. But now 
at last our hour strikes and we stand, in awe 
and wonder, an " I," a j^f-conscious individ- 
uality, trying to discern the nature of the re- 



124 The Evohition of Immortality 

lationship we sustain to the wondrous forces 
and kindred associations that encompass us 
on every side. 

What is this if not a new birth, the vestibule 
into the world of spiritual being ? The process 
of development is seen to have been from 
homogeneity to heterogeneity ; from oneness 
to an infinite variety of forms of expression and 
states of being ; through crude form and a low 
order of life in the primitive mineral world, to 
form, intelligence, and conscious activity in 
the organic, culminating, in the genus homo, in 
self-conscious individuality as the pinnacle of 
progress. During the long ages of the past, 
preceding the advent of man, all forms of or- 
ganic life were largely, if not entirely, passive, 
subject to creative external forces. But now 
at last an organism appears that is self-assert- 
ive, possessing creative powers and energies 
which distinguish it from all preceding forms, 
thus miniaturing in its own being, in some de- 
gree at least, those qualities which character- 
ize the Source from which it sprang. 

More than this. Man not only recognizes 



Discussion 125 

that he has acquired these powers and quali- 
ties, but he also conceives and ever aspires to 
the possession of still larger, of even unlimited 
capabilities. He has already, in a mental sense, 
risen to an infinite number of material worlds 
which inhabit space, analyzing their physical 
elements and qualities, measuring their move- 
ments, and noting mutual relations to other 
worlds. Nor is this all. He is peering into 
the occult, into the noumenal, the subjective, 
the spiritual world. And pressing close upon 
his dreams and visions, he has made and is 
making marvelous progress in gaining the 
mastery of those material forces which, un- 
mastered, impede his onward march, and is 
demonstrating more and ever more the possi- 
bility of mind rising to the plane of complete 
supremacy over matter, thus indicating the 
course, purpose, and end of his being. 

But here, if not before, critics may say : 
" What has this to do with your analogy ? We 
admit that the stage of self-conscious individ- 
uality has been reached ; but in past stages 
such consciousness did not exist. What right, 



126 The Evolution of Immortality 

therefore, have we to infer that we shall take 
over, into the next stage, this consciousness 
without break of continuity ? We have left 
behind many, if not all, of the things which 
belonged to the past stage. Why, in the com- 
ing change, should we take with us anything 
of this, and why should self-consciousness be 
the exception ? " 

I reply that a right to such inference is based 
upon the analogy in question. In tracing the 
history of personal consciousness we must not 
overlook its antecedent stages, nor the relation 
of consciousness to the sense organs, which are 
evolved during the embryonic stage. The eye, 
the ear, and all the other sense organs of an 
embryo certainly have no explanation of being 
if they are not to be considered a prophecy of 
an existence beyond the embryo state. They 
are of no sort of use to the embryo as an em- 
bryo. Their real significance is made plain 
only as we perceive the relationship that exists 
between their function and the present realiza- 
tion of a higher form of life and consciousness 
in this stage of development. They are now 



Discussion 127 

seen to be the medium by which the facts of 
the universe are transmuted into individual 
consciousness. 

Recall the fact, and bear in mind its true 
import, that we brought these sense organs 
with us when we came from the embryonic 
state into this ; also that, before this event, 
they had begun in a vague and indefinite man- 
ner to indicate their function, and to hint at 
a larger consciousness as a result of their joint 
functional activity. Had we not done so, where 
would have been the possibility of self-con- 
sciousness for us in this stage ? In proto- 
organic life, where recent investigations bring 
to view such wonderful phenomena, there is no 
central nervous structure whatever, and the 
subtratum of powers of perception and voli- 
tional activity (actual movements) seem to be 
simply undifferentiated protoplasm. 

This is true also of the primitive cell stage 
of our own life history. It possessed and man- 
ifested a psychic life, a sentiency, which is the 
more or less common attribute of all protoplas- 
mic bodies, powers of perception, and volitional 



128 The Evolution of Immortality 

activities that are based upon this perceptive 
quality. These may be the result of simple 
physiological processes, but if so, they must 
even then be considered as, at least, the sub- 
stratum of consciousness, the preceding step 
in the organic series which moves on to con- 
sciousness, finally ending or eventuating in self- 
consciousness, — a difference in degree and not 
of kind. But if we confine our attention to 
the protoplasm or germ-plasma of the cell 
simply, we shall find little enough, surely, to 
indicate or foretell sense organs and the ac- 
companying manifestations of consciousness as 
the crowning result of embryonic evolution. 

But these significant results nevertheless 
came about, being evolved from the germal 
protoplasm, and are pregnant with promise, 
bespeaking still more wonderful facts yet to 
come. Mysterious and far reaching are the 
forces that are involved therein ! But there 
can be, surely, no " break of continuity " in 
the process that connects the cell life even 
with that of the self-conscious individual in 
the present stage of existence. 



Discussion 129 

If man to-day does not possess, or is not 
evolving, spiritual sense organs, he certainly 
has developed significant powers of spiritual 
apprehension that are not essential to him as 
a physical being merely ! This being the case, 
why should not the fact be recognized as cor- 
responding to the fact of sense organs in the 
embryonic state, and be accorded the same 
import ? For what purpose are these spiritual 
powers evolved to this point in our being if 
they are not to realize a full fruition in some 
good time ahead ? They surely have no neces- 
essary explanation in any fact of physical 
existence alone. We find in our organism 
numerous rudimentary organs that relate to 
the history of our organic evolution, way-marks 
by the road up which we have come. In ad- 
dition, there is this other fact that can be 
understood or explained only as it is conceived 
to be an index-board pointing out the way of 
future progress. 

There is surely no " break " in the chain of 
continuity that exists between the sense organs 
of the embryonic state and self -consciousness 



130 The Evolution of Immortality 

as now existing in this stage. Consciousness 
of a certain form existed, or was evolved, dur- 
ing the past existence, — the prenatal, — and 
was brought with us into this one, without loss 
or immediate change. This consciousness has 
now developed into self-consciousness. Why, 
in truth, should it be left behind, when we pass 
on to the next stage ? Would not analogy im- 
ply that it is to go with us, as the sense organs 
and embryonic consciousness came with us 
from that stage of life into this ? 

Again, does it appear that we really "lost " 
or " left behind " anything that relates to our 
essential identity, in coming from the past 
stage into this ? The vehicle is changing con- 
stantly, it is true. But the vehicle, or form 
merely, does not constitute the individual. 
Individuality is allied with form and expresses 
itself through form, but itself must be appre- 
hended as something else than form. And 
so an endless series of forms, or the disap- 
pearance of it altogether, does not dispose 
of individuality. When the law of change 
results in new forms, something goes on. Is 



Discussion 131 

it not the life-principle ? The vital principle 
within may be traced back in an unbroken 
line of continuity into an infinite past. It 
is identical with that which is apparent in the 
earliest geological ages. It is identical with 
the force that builds up the inorganic crystal. 
" Its constant tendency is toward the produc- 
tion of more complex and highly organized and 
differentiated forms of life/' Life is the man- 
ifestation of the divine upward impulse that 
inheres in Nature, constituting its organic 
1 energy. It is, throughout the whole organic 
series, the determining cause or antecedent 
of form, as function precedes and determines 
the formation of organs. In the primitive or- 
ganic world, — micro-organic life, — the func- 
tions of locomotion, prehension, nutrition, 
propagation, perception, and so forth, were 
exhibited long before special organs were dif- 
ferentiated for the purpose of a more extended 
achievement along these various lines. The 
acquirement of these special organs was cer- 
tainly no loss. They were the means, rather, 
of a larger life. 



132 The Evolution of Immortality 

There is relation here to consciousness. The 
upward impulse still manifests itself. We are 
constantly aspiring and struggling to acquire 
new powers, new experiences, new elements of 
being as a means of enlarging and expanding 
our consciousness. Thus the present is larger 
than the past. But the present moment in- 
cludes and enwraps all of the past. The past 
is lost only in the sense that it is swallowed 
up by the present. It has entered into new 
combinations of experience, resulting in new 
forms of consciousness, it is true. But it is 
all here in the now. If to H2O we add an- 
other molecule of oxygen, we have a new chem- 
ical combination, H2O2 ; but the water, or the 
former combination, is not lost ; it is simply 
merged into, and becomes a part of, a new 
form, which is termed hydrogen per-oxide. It 
is water still, but with a plus. So with our 
consciousness. A plus is ever being added. 
Every new experience, every new observation, 
adds a new element to our consciousness, mod- 
ifying it, enlarging it, giving it new powers 
and forms. 



Discussion 133 

If it is suggested here that this is practical 
annihilation, I can only say that it does not 
appear, to my own mind at least, to be so any 
further than as it may be regarded an annihi- 
lation of any given rigidly fixed state or stage 
of being. It surely implies an ever changing 
form of existence, but no annihilation of the 
principle that determines and controls the 
changes in form, nor of the consciousness that 
is allied with, and is the constant and most 
marked expression of, this living, determining 
force or power. 

The real meaning of life, as of evolution, 
is, "continuous progressive change." Asso- 
ciated with life is not only a passion of being, 
but of forever becoming. 

And would we have it otherwise ? If an 
embryo might be considered as wishing to 
remain always an embryo, or a child always 
a child, we should say that this was because 
of a limited vision or range of perception of 
the real meaning and grandeur of life. Shall 
a man, then, whose apprehension of the pos- 
sibilities of his being has passed beyond the 



134 The Evolution of Immortality 

embryonic and childish stage, wish to remain 
always simply a man ? Or should he rather, 
looking back along the line of his ascent and 
noting its constantly expanding life from the 
first moment of its faintest tracing, bravely 
and manfully, trustingly and confidently face 
the future, resting in the conviction — based 
upon the manifest purpose as indicated in his 
life history — that " the earnest expectation 
of the creation waiteth for the revealing of 
the sons of God " ? 

It will thus appear that, at least to the ap- 
prehension of the author, we do take over into 
each new stage all the consciousness that has 
accrued in these past stages, " without break 
of continuity. " And as we have done this in 
the past, so we are still doing now, day by day, 
from one period of our present life to another, 
— as from youth to early manhood and woman- 
hood, and from that point to mature life. And 
just here is where the "analogy" possesses 
force and promise. It is the consciousness of 
our younger life — our yesterdays — that alone 
remains with us and is a part of us to-day. 



Discussion 135 

Everything else, save the life-principle and the 
potencies enwrapped therein, is gone. The 
form and the material combinations that com- 
posed it are not here to-day ; but the conscious- 
ness, the personality, the individuality, remains. 
There is no break of continuity in it. This 
remains and is ever taking on larger propor- 
tions and new accruing elements, as the result 
of the ongoing life of conscious act, experience, 
and observation. Even more than this may 
be claimed. This consciousness is not only the 
result of our own past experience, but of the 
experience of the whole human race, conscious 
and otherwise, as well. This is all stored up 
somewhere in our being, ready to be awakened 
into action by any bent of corresponding cir- 
cumstances, constituting an inheritance out of 
all the life that has been lived before us, to 
which no age, no human being, has failed to 
add a contribution. 

A fine expression is given to this thought 
by George Eliot, in the following : 

" Lay the young eagle in what nest you will, 
The cry and swoop of eagles overhead 



136 The Evolution of Immortality 

Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame 

And make it spread its wings and poise itself 

For the eagle's flight." 

If to the prosaic scientist this seems " tran- 
scendental," it need only be said here that — 
in the realm of mentality — thoughts, senti- 
ments, consciousness are surely nearer real 
things than any form or combination of so- 
called matter that constitutes the human or- 
ganism, the temporary vehicle of such realities. 
To live, and the consequent consciousness, is 
the end and purpose of being. Life is the 
only real. It came from God, without break 
of continuity, up through the submerged, phys- 
ical, prenatal state to the self-conscious and 
therefore spiritual stage, and thus has arrived 
at " conscious individuality." 

Wherever there is life, there intelligence is 
also. Life and sentiency are correlative terms, 
each implying the other. The Divine Intelli- 
gence which is immanent in all forms of life, 
from the lowest to the highest, is markedly 
manifest in this universally progressive unfold- 
ing of organisms. ' ' The same intelligence 



Discussion 137 

which in an unconscious form guides all organic 
formation and all motor instincts, finally be- 
comes conscious in the brains of the higher 
animals, and conscious of itself in man." The 
Universal Life differentiates itself into an infi- 
nite variety of forms, begetting, reproducing, 
evolving, individuating ceaselessly. Hence the 
connection of the Infinite with the finite. In 
man as an individual, as well as in man a genus, 
has arisen, has evolved, the power to apprehend 
this relation of sonship ; and thus is seen the 
purpose involved in the law, the way, the 
processes of Nature. By the divine right of 
our inheritance we are immortal. Being indi- 
vidualized as the necessary outcome of those 
processes of Nature that are fundamental, in- 
herent, and universal, self - consciousness be- 
comes the evidence and assurance of having 
attained, by the natural processes of evolution, 
the power to project ourselves into other worlds 
than that of the material or physical. 

More than this. It is the power, the essen- 
tial requisite, by which eternal persistence is 
made possible. It is the way, the open door, 



138 The Evohition of Immortality 

to spiritual realities, and shows us that spirit- 
uality is indeed the natural outcome of the 
very laws of man's being, and that it is its own 
ground of certitude. 

More life and larger life, then, is what we 
crave and aspire to attain. And all of life and 
experience, here and hereafter, can only tend, 
ultimately at least, to intensify individuality, 
and so separate us more and ever more from 
physical nature, giving to mind — the ego, the 
real man — that supremacy over matter which 
characterizes spirit and renders it capable of 
an independent existence. We may thus come 
to see that truth and righteousness and love and 
aspiration and all spiritual qualities are verities, 
and from necessity eternal ; that we may incor- 
porate these qualities into our own being, and 
that, so far as they live in us or we in them, we 
cannot die ; that, therefore, we may now enter 
into immortal life ; that it may be no longer 
a conviction merely, but an experience, a life. 
Here, it would seem, there is no room for doubt. 

" What is excellent, 
As God lives, is permanent." 



Discussion 1 39 

The full import of the terms " self -conscious- 
ness " and " self-conscious individuality,' ' as 
used in this connection, may be granted this 
further word : 

If self-consciousness is to be considered as 
the evidence of spiritual birth, the vestibule to 
the spiritual world, this does not imply that 
self-consciousness is the ultimate of spiritual 
life. It should rather be considered as an 
intermediate step from the lower forms of 
conscious life on the one hand, from which 
the individual has arisen or awakened, to that 
higher and infinitely more sublime unconscious 
life on the other. A child at birth has before 
him the task of learning to walk. In order 
to achieve the power of walking, he must put 
forth conscious effort. When he has accom- 
plished his task to perfection, he may walk 
unconsciously. And so with man as a self- 
conscious individual ; has he not a divine task 
before him of learning to walk uprightly in all 
the ways of a moral and spiritual life worthy 
of the divinest ambition conceivable to men 
or gods ? To incorporate in his being all the 



140 The Evolution of Immortality 

spiritual qualities so that they may spontane- 
ously well up into action independent of con- 
scious effort, is not, certainly, an ideal beyond 
conception. Such an existence, such a state 
of being, would be, in its very essence, immor- 
tal. Such a life would be as permanent as are 
the qualities it embodies. It would have risen 
into the Unconscious Eternal Life. It would 
be nothing less than the incarnation of the 
infinite in the finite soul. 

Is this impossible to man ? Yes, if this life 
is to be the end. No, a thousand times no, if 
his entrance here upon the threshold of strug- 
gle for spiritual attainment is accorded its true 
meaning and significance. 

"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what 's a heaven for ? " 

In a filial co-operation of the finite will with 
the Divine Will, our highest, truest self is 
found, not lost. Self-conscious individuality 
thus secures at-one-ment with Infinite Exist- 
ence and eternal verities. Self-consciousness 
thus rises to Selflessness. Not in the sense of 
parting with the consciousness or sense of self 



Discussion 141 

(which would indeed be " like taking an eter- 
nal farewell of the soul "), for " consciousness 
is the necessary attribute of mental action " ; 
it is rather a glad apprehension of being a vital 
part of the indivisible, indestructible whole. 
A passive perception of divine qualities is thus 
transformed into co-operative activity toward 
the accomplishment of divine ends. The self 
is sunk in the Divine order, and a vital unity 
is voluntarily established and immovably fixed 
between the Creator and created, the Father 
and child. Here is no annihilation of individ- 
ual finite lives, but a harmonious merging of 
the true functional activity of each individual 
life in the Infinite Life ; a progressive move- 
ment of the individual toward the realization 
of his high destiny. 

" Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve, 
Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become. 
Grant this ? — then man must pass from old to new, 
From vain to real, from mistake to fact ; 
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. 
How could man have progression otherwise ? " 



XI 

Aftermath* 

THAT interest and appreciation should call 
for a new edition of this little book, twenty 
years after it was written, the author frankly 
admits is a source of real satisfaction. During 
the time mentioned, many and varied com- 
ments, criticisms, and judgments have come to 
his knowledge regarding its value, and from 
widely different sources. In the main, these 
judgments agree that the volume contains, at 
least, elements of suggestiveness which give 
it permanent value. This was all that was 
hoped for when it was first issued, and the fact 
that it has lived for twenty years is, in itself, 
a vital testimony that it does contain living 
elements of truth. 

* Appendix to the Fourth Edition (1906). 



Aftermath 143 

This being the case, attempt has been made 
to revise the work only in a minor degree. 
The analogies stand, and the author to-day 
wishes them to stand, substantially as they 
were first penned. No advancement in science 
during these years has, in his opinion, served 
to weaken their validity or significance. On 
the other hand, it is believed that the marvel- 
ous advance in the great world of physical 
knowledge, during these wonderful years, adds 
reinforcement and strength, in no small degree, 
to the conclusions that are drawn therefrom. 

As to the metaphysics of the book, more 
than is found in the original text may well be 
said. Twenty years has brought about many 
and great changes in scientific data, not, how- 
ever, affecting thought so much in a revolu- 
tionary as in an evolutionary sense, 

The word " matter " does not mean to-day 
what it meant even a few years ago. This is 
especially true of the scientific interpretation, 
and is also largely true as to the popular con- 
ception. Twenty years ago the word " ether " 
was but little known ; and, even in the scien- 



144 The Evolution of Immortality 

tific world, it had but an indefinite meaning. 
To-day all is changed. The world of ether is 
no longer a vague hypothesis. It is regarded 
as the only real substance conceivable to the 
scientific world ; and toward an understanding 
of its qualities and attributes we, to-day, see 
the great physicists of the world directing 
their chief interest and investigation. The 
riddle of matter, some of them say, is already 
well solved. There now remains the great 
problem of world-substance. Matter, using 
the word in its formerly accepted sense, can no 
longer be regarded as substance. It is, rather, 
the phenomena of substance, a mode of the 
energies inhering in substance. 

In the strictly scientific sense, there is no 
matter at all, but simply " energy in motion.'' 
There is nothing in the universe that is not a 
form of energy. Everything in it which we 
have been taught to call matter can now be 
defined only in terms of energy. " We have," 
says a recent writer,* " but to concede the 

* Professor S. Lawrence Bigelow (University of Mich- 
igan) : Popular Science Monthly, July, 1906. 



Aftermath 145 

logical sequence of modern reasoning, all based 
on experimental evidence, and the last strong- 
hold of the materialists is carried, and we have 
a universe of energy in which matter has no 
necessary part." This is a statement seen to 
be so clearly true that some of our old-time 
" materialists " are now classing themselves 
as " energyists " instead. 

In the light of modern investigations and 
discoveries, it is not too much to say that all 
forms of matter are now known to be reduci- 
ble to some form of electric energy. This 
conclusion is reached and accepted as an out- 
come of reliable laboratory demonstration. But 
beyond this even, there are to-day few if any 
scientists in the realm of physics who do not 
hold that, theoretically at least, all forms of 
electric energy are reducible to some form of 
etheric energy. Thus, to-day, science itself 
warrants the statement that matter is a mode 
of ether-motion, or a mode of etheric energy, 
if one likes that term better. 

This is not saying, however, that there is no 
objective fact external to consciousness. It, 



146 T]ie Evolution of Immortality 

rather, recognizes the fact, but explains it in 
terms of energy, not in terms of matter as 
ordinarily understood. Using the word matter 
here, however, for a special purpose, in the 
sense in which it has been generally under- 
stood, we may say that there are grades or 
planes of matter ; and that each grade is inter- 
fused by a finer substance, unlike matter in 
any of its varied forms ; and that this sub- 
stance is continuous and uniformly present 
throughout all space. From it, furthermore, 
arises the infinite variety of manifestations 
which constitute our present phenomenal world, 
— the physical and psychical world in which 
we now move and have our being ; for the 
ether, not matter, appears to be the sole vehicle 
of every form of energy, both known and un- 
known. And, by the application of the law of 
indestructibility, it is coming to be understood, 
so it is claimed, how one form of energy can 
be transmuted into another. This means more 
than at first thought is apparent ; and it has 
an important bearing upon our theme. 



Aftermath 147 



We are not, it may first be noted, bereft of 
substance and left afloat in an intangible sea 
of unstable energies. Substance there is, and 
energy ; the latter being the manifestation and 
constant expression of the former. And as 
all forms of matter, so-called, are reducible to 
some form of etheric energy, super-physical in 
its nature, so the infinite forms of etheric 
energy, we may reasonably suppose, are reduci- 
ble, finally, to an ultimate, super-physical en- 
ergy embodied in the infinite ocean of the 
ultimate substance — the ether. If, however, 
it suits one's thought better to class the various 
forms of etheric energy under a single head 
and term it Ether-Energy, or the energy that 
inheres in and characterizes the one substance, 
no real scientific objection can be interposed. 
" There is an infinite and eternal Energy from 
which all things proceed " is only another 
formulation of the same essential deductive 
thought. In either case, however, we must 
not lose sight of the substance in which this 
energy is embodied. Heretofore scientific in- 



148 TJie Evolution of Immortality 

vestigation and the consequent modes of logical 
deduction have been too exclusively engrossed 
in molecular motion, or the phenomenal forms 
of energy, overlooking the more important fact 
— the substance in which this energy is embod- 
ied, and of which it is an expression. 

A rational concept of the real unity of a 
universe implies that " Potter and clay " are 
one ; implies " the basic substance of a self- 
created, self-moving cosmos, an infinite and 
eternal entity," whose chief attributes as ob- 
served in the phenomena of Nature are life 
and consciousness ; or, in other words, " a sen- 
tient property by virtue of which it displays 
the phenomena which we term life." 

Ether lives. " Yesterday, to-day, forever, it 
is the same exhaustless well-spring of motion, 
beauty, feeling, and life." Here, with all the 
emphasis of the later scientific research it may 
be said, is found the fundamental, rational basis 
for the modern conception of "the evolution 
of mind, its desire of infinite opportunity, its 
tendency to unlimited growth, and its hope of 
immortal life." 



Aftermath 149 



" Matter/' or that form of energy which has 
been called matter, is, in a relative sense at 
least, a limited product from Nature's work- 
shop. The ether is infinitely boundless in 
extent, carrying within itself infinite possibili- 
ties and potentialities, which it is evermore 
realizing through the sublime processes of 
intelligent organization — organic evolution. 
And organic evolution presupposes an Infinite 
Organic Entity, vital, living, conscious, and 
certainly no less than personal. 

When the analysis of " matter " is pushed 
to the extreme, it is found that « matter and 
force become confounded, and the only effect- 
ive reality remaining is the invisible ether, and 
in the study of its manifestations we must 
seek the history of the universe." This is all 
the more clear since almost all our astronomers 
are agreed that the material universe is a finite 
and, therefore, limited system. " Since, then, 
we have to deal with a finite system, we are 
entitled to apply the laws which are formulated 
by the mechanical theories ; ... for we see 



150 The Evolution of Immortality 

in the universe a fixed quantity of matter acted 
upon according to very definite laws by an 
equal quantity of energy; here we are con- 
fronted with a dynamical system, the trans- 
formations of which we may investigate with 
perfect exactness according to the mathemat- 
ical processes applicable to mechanics. So, 
then, if it were possible for us to establish all 
the formulae which at a given moment repre- 
resent the variable state of the universe, we 
might quite well, by an appropriate series of 
calculations, deduce therefrom the resulting 
state at the moment immediately succeed- 
ing, and so, step by step, follow out all the 
transformations to come. . . . An infinite 
intelligence possessed by all these formulae, 
representing the variable state of the world, 
. . . would thus have a perception of the 
future; . . . and thus our limited mind can 
conceive how the intelligent being might ac- 
quire a progressive vision of the future, whilst 
undergoing a gradual development toward the 
infinite." 

Herein we may catch a glimpse of the sig- 



Aftermath 151 

nificance involved in the sublime processes of 
organic evolution — the attainment of a con- 
sciousness whose sweep of vision knows no 
past or future, an eternal Now. 

All the sciences teach unvaryingly that 
energy apart from some form of embodiment 
does not exist. An atom of hydrogen, for 
instance, may be divided into 700 or more 
parts ; and in the cell we have several billions 
of ions. Still each part or ion exhibits the 
body aspect as surely as the aspect of energy. 
Certain conclusions must inevitably follow, 
based upon these and a multitude of other 
facts known to the scientific world to-day. 
But this need not disturb certain phases of 
world-wide thought further than to cause it to 
change its point of view ; and every change of 
one's view-point, often enforced against the 
will, means growth and enlargement of the 
real self. But in this case it is believed that 
the change, when it is more fully understood 
in its wide scope of implication and ramifica- 
tion, will afford an immense relief to the 



152 The Evolution of Immortality 

wide-spread incubus of fear and dread heavily 
weighing down the awakening consciousness 
of a large part of the intelligent world. But, 
in any event, the world must learn to follow 
where the truth leads. Only in so following 
is a higher, larger life to be gained. 

It may already be said that a deeper ob- 
servation and perception of the laws and 
processes of evolution show that there must 
indeed be differentiations of form as well as 
of quality and attribute ; that, in fact, the two 
go together. 

" For soul is form and doth the body make." 

And in this process of body-making we discern 
Nature's method of individualizing " soul" or 
form ; it being rationally conceivable that the 
individual soul is represented by etheric move- 
ments of a more subtle description than those 
that constitute the bodily elements. Organ- 
ization and intelligence, however, rise hand in 
hand, each dependent upon the other. " Sun- 
dered, were that possible, matter would no 



Aftermath 153 

longer be matter ; the universe would vanish 
on the breadth of Void." 

The very fundamental tenets "of evolution 
tell us that " it is the tendency of the function 
to create the organ " ; that, as Herbert Spencer 
puts it, " function precedes organism." If 
thought, then, were simply and solely an out- 
come of the brain's physical or material action, 
this law of evolution would be completely vio- 
lated, for it would then be the organ which had 
created the function. " We should rather view 
the brain as the organ which materializes con- 
sciousness and ideas in the physical world. 
Otherwise they would exist only in the etheric 
plane. If in the evening of life thought loses 
somewhat of its vigor and clarity, it is because 
the instrument which it possesses in order to 
manifest itself no longer enjoys its pristine 
acuteness, but has become worn out together 
with the physical body." 

It has also too long and too often been said 
that Nature has no concern for the individual. 
It was, and is, a superficial view. A closer 



154 The Evolution of Immortality 

view shows that, in her processes and ongoings, 
she is as concerned for the individual as for 
the mass. In fact, one may almost say that 
Nature cares for nothing else than the individ- 
ual. The sequence of Nature's laws is marked 
by her movements from homogeneity to heter- 
ogeneity ; from the one substance to an as- 
cending scale of infinite transformations of the 
same, — her own substance, her own body, 
possessing the elements of her own being, both 
physical and psychical, in potential if not in 
actual form. 

Viewing the subject, then, from the stand- 
point of science, " disembodied spirit " is, in the 
abstract, unthinkable. To disembody spirit or 
personality would be the sure way of annihilat- 
ing it. Disembody an atom, and the atom is 
gone. Spirit, life, intelligence, energy, ex- 
presses and manifests substance, or some dif- 
ferentiated form of substance. Were it pos- 
sible to absolutely annihilate any particle of 
substance, all its characteristic manifestations 
would cease to be. Body and manifestation, 
ion and psychon, are mutually dependent. In 



Aftermath 155 

an essential sense they are one. Who shall 
say which, if either, is primary ? Is either 
primary ? This, however, is not saying that 
the sentient element in any given individual 
form or body of substance is not the dominant 
force in its evolution, the one permanent qual- 
ity that abides, while forms continually change. 
On the other hand, the higher scientific syn- 
thesis of to-day makes it possible to define not 
only life, but the universe itself, as consciously 
directed energy. 

As long, then, as spirit, life, consciousness, 
remains existent, there must be form, body, 
expression ; else there would be no differentia- 
tion, — Nature's method of constituting and 
characterizing individuality of being. 

In an essential sense, then, body is the price, 
so to speak, of individuality, here or elsewhere, 
in this form of life or any other conceivable 
form. And the same principle will apply with 
equal force if we substitute the word person- 
ality for individuality. 

This conception is in harmony with what is 
now seen to be one of Nature's most funda- 



156 The Evolution of Immortality 

mental principles in organic evolution : the 
" innate tendency to differentiate/' This prin- 
ciple is, in fact, the basis of Nature's universal 
law of growth. Without it there would be 
even no physical world with its co-operative 
associations and principles which underlie the 
perpetuity of individual life and its embodi- 
ment in physical form. It is so fundamental 
that we may well term it the " God-principle " 
within all forms of life, more effective in the 
evolutionary processes than even heredity or 
environment. To it man owes his divine im- 
pulse to strive, — strive to know, strive to 
attain, — to evermore strive on and upward, 
notwithstanding whatever difficulties beset his 
pathway. And this is no accident. It is 
the nature of the " stuff " out of which he is 
"made" — evolved. And is it not, likewise, 
a divine promise that he shall not strive in vain 
in his effort, his co-operative effort to establish 
the stability and perpetuity of his own evolving 
individuality ? 

We thus catch a glimpse of " at what a heavy 



Aftermath 157 

price the material universe must buy its organic 
life, which is its beauty, seeing that it pays 
with its very existence. Is it not legitimate 
to think that this is no useless sacrifice, but 
that it must contribute to transfer permanently 
to a newer and more subtle plane that ephem- 
eral life which the universe has purchased 
with its own ? " 

Again, it is said, and by one who has given 
the border-land discoveries of modern science 
the most profound study : " We know that the 
most insignificant material facts are recorded 
in the invisible ether ; it preserves their image 
in its unceasing vibrations ; must we not sup- 
pose that life itself and, above all, personality, 
which are the most dearly purchased manifesta- 
tions of the activity of the universe, likewise 
persist in the hidden vibrations of a yet more 
subtle ether ? " 

Planes of the etheric substance, as well as 
of the grosser forms of matter, are here clearly 
suggested by this writer ; and not only hinted, 



158 The Evolution of Immortality 

but clearly held by himself and others in 
current literature upon the subject. Call this 
a mere speculation, a conjecture, if we will; 
but it is a scientific conjecture, supported by 
a vast and rapidly increasing body of accepted 
fact ; and it may be seen how grandly it gen- 
eralizes the doctrine of evolution, seeing that 
" it supposes the incessant transformations 
which that doctrine observes in living organ- 
isms to be taking place, not only in perceptible 
matter, but also in all the planes of an increas- 
ingly subtle fluidic matter. Such a supposi- 
tion carries back the limits of the infinitely 
small far beyond the boldest flights of the 
imagination, and we thus recognize that the 
wonderful ether which bathes all worlds is 
really the necessary agent of the unity of cre- 
ation, not only in the infinity of space, but in 
the infinity of life." 

We to-day, by virtue of the principle of dif- 
ferentiation here referred to, recognize our- 
selves as but individual, differentiated forms 



Aftermath 159 

of the one substance, inheriting — actually- 
inheriting — something of the attributes and 
qualities of that substance, — " children of 
God," as the older phrase renders it. Out of 
that substance we have emerged, bringing with 
us life, and mind, and spiritual being. There- 
fore " whatever may be in this substratum " is 
ours by right of inheritance, and ours to attain 
as individuals, — unless, perchance, we forget 
to strive. Surely, moreover, one of the qual- 
ities of this infinite substratum is its eternal en- 
durance, its endlessness of existence. Neither 
beginning nor ending is conceivable here. 

Combining, then, old and new phrases, we 
may say : From God we come, and in God we 
move ever on and up through the stairway of 
ascending forms, — organic because vital and 
living, possessing and partaking of the one 
eternal energy common to the one eternal 
substance which pervades, if it does not even 
constitute, the universe of Being, carrying 
with itself the energies of physical and spir- 
itual life. 



160 The Evolution of Immortality 

Bodies, then, may not be left out of the 
rational conception of what constitutes an im- 
mortal personal existence. Not these bodies 
which we know so well, it is true. These are, 
even now, ever changing day by day. And 
this fact, rightly viewed, should give us a clue 
and hint of what lies before us. In a strictly 
scientific sense we have no real self -owners hip 
in this ever flowing stream of the primordial 
physical elements that constitutes our visible 
bodies ; its " usufruct " is all that, in any real 
sense, ever belongs to us. The only really 
permanent element that is ours, in an organic 
sense, is " an etheric vortex, generating from 
minute to minute the movements of life." Of 
this super-physical element, now invisible to 
sense perception, our real bodies are consti- 
tuted; and we already know enough of its 
nature to assure us that it is not subject to 
any of the destructive accidents that beset the 
grosser forms of matter, such as flesh and blood 
represent. "The living organism, neverthe- 



Aftermath 161 

less, preserves its own permanent personality, 
which we are unable to connect with any of 
the material forces which are present. We are 
bound to admit that we are confronted with 
a new force, independent of the others and of 
a nature more subtle than theirs/'* This is 
very significant when taken in connection with 
the remark of the same eminent philosopher, 
that it is well known that " the ether registers 
with incorruptible fidelity the most insignifi- 
cant facts. " 

Transformations, then, take on, as well as 
put off. And science now shows us the ma- 
terial at hand, in infinite abundance, for life's 
uses in the construction of its finer forms of 
differentiation. Of this material a late writer 
says: "Though the" (our present) "material 
body is the only body which at the present mo- 
ment actually responds to its environment, yet 
the latent capacity for such response inheres 
in each body in the ethereal series, ready to be- 

* Louis Elb£ : " Future Life in the Light of Ancient 
Wisdom and Modern Science." 



1 62 The Evolution of Immortality 

come actual upon the advent of the requisite 
stimulus, — the death of the outer body. The 
ethereal body, of course, is not affected by 
any of the agencies that operate to injure 
or destroy masses of our matter. Neither 
sword-blade nor bullet can divide it, the weight 
of all the seas cannot crush it, closest sealing 
cannot confine it. The ethereal body knows 
not the hurts of the material. I do not see, 
therefore, why any organic individual should 
ever die. I do not think one ever does. Sim- 
ply, when the death transformation overtakes 
it, and the material body drops away, the next 
more tenuous body, flowing free, takes on new 
beauty as the new adjustment arises between 
it and the psychic energies released from their 
previous association. "* 

Let us, to illustrate this conception, con- 
sider a single analogy drawn from the history 
of embryological life. The mature embryo finds 
itself provided with an organ heretofore un- 
used, that of respiration. During its placental 

* F. H. Turner : " Beside the New-Made Grave." 



Aftermath 163 

life and embodiment there is no need of such 
an organ as the lungs, and no explanation of its 
presence is to be found other than that which 
points to some other stage of life and environ- 
ment than its placental existence. This organ 
could function only as it received the direct 
stimulus of a new environment. This it re- 
ceives in the "death-transformation " from its 
placental embodiment to this stage of life's dif- 
ferentiation, — what we recognize as " birth." 
And in its response to this stimulus — its first 
independent physical act — life's newly ac- 
quired processes begin their new adjustments, 
in a world so vastly greater than the old that 
the continuity of relationship is readily lost 
sight of. 

Something not unlike this, we may reason- 
ably suppose, takes place when we finally exit 
from this present gross body of ours. We 
already possess spiritual organs, or, at least, a 
vast surplus of spiritual capacity and power, 
that are unessential to a merely physical exist- 
ence here and now. Why should we not, then, 



164 The Evolution of Immortality 

regard these as prophetic of a stage of life 
where their true functioning shall adequately 
explain their present germal existence ? The 
lung of an embryo, as well as many another 
organ, had no meaning apart from a stage 
of life then yet to be entered upon. So, it 
may truly be said, the evident capacities and 
foregleamings of a spiritual nature, manifest 
here in this life, have no sufficient meaning 
or explanation apart from a stage where a 
full and free adjustment of adaptation to its 
native air shall be possible. And, clearly, the 
" native air " of this inner, evolving organism 
of ours is to be found only in the atmosphere 
of that etheric world whose confines are as 
illimitable as spiritual existence. 

To illustrate further, this basic substance 
of our bodies, the "mother-substance" as it is 
coming to be called, being one, and its energy 
one, it may be said that ultimate substance and 
ultimate energy afford us a basis of organic 
unity. Energy inheres in the substance. It 
is the life, or, at least, the manifestation of the 



Aftermath 165 

life of the substance, Hence, the correlation 
of energies, the transmutation of energies, is 
reduced to a rational basis. Science opens 
here a wide field for a class of deductions 
which it would be underestimation to term 
mere speculations. 

We have here to take into account the laws 
that relate to the indestructibility of energy, 
the laws of mechanics, of mathematics, of chem- 
istry, of electric force, the physical laws and 
phenomena which are accepted universally as 
establishing the theory that action and reac- 
tion of all forces are, always and everywhere, 
equal. Thus, even the laws of compensation 
have a vital bearing upon our subject, and have 
been interestingly and suggestively followed 
out in some of the later investigations into the 
great realm of universe-energies. It is clearly 
seen, to-day, it is claimed, that the ether is " a 
wondrous medium insuring the community of 
worlds and the unity of the universe " ; that 
it is "the fountain-head of all energy " ; that 
" all the phenomena of which we are cognizant 



1 66 The Evolution of Immortality 

are direct or indirect manifestations of the 
ether acting upon matter/' And, by apply- 
ing the laws of rational mechanics, we are 
taught " how it is possible for the mysterious 
ether to register the past and reveal the future 
through its never-ending vibrations, which are 
capable of infinite multiplication without being 
modified or destroyed." 

The etheric body, then, according to this 
theory, — and there is a large aggregation of 
rigidly scientific data to support the theory, — 
"forms the necessary link between the imma- 
terial soul and the physical body. During life 
it remains attached within the body which it 
animates, permeating all its parts. It is, how- 
ever, more especially concentrated in the brain 
and in the network of sensory and motor nerves, 
the activity of which it keeps up ; it subdivides 
itself in order to penetrate all the organs of 
the body, whereof it would seem to espouse 
the outward form. . . . But it also acts out- 
side the physical body by giving rise to more 



Aftermath 167 

complex manifestations involving various fac- 
ulties of the soul. In certain special cases it 
can escape almost completely from the body, 
and, to use the now accepted term, externalize 
itself ; it can reveal its presence by phenom- 
ena visible to all, and the investigation of those 
phenomena acquires particular interest as re- 
gards the demonstrative proof of the existence 
of this hypothetical aggregate/ ' (The word 
" aggregate,' ' as here used, refers to the etheric 
body. ) Among these singular phenomena there 
are almost conclusive evidences " which show 
sensitivity, which we erroneously attribute to 
the physical body, to be a property essentially 
distinct from the physical body, which in 
itself is inert like all matter." The laws 
have even been formulated which govern these 
phenomena. 

To those who have not kept pace with the 
advance of modern investigation, such state- 
ments as these may seem like fairy tales from 
Wonderland. Therefore it cannot be too fre- 
quently or forcibly stated that the investiga- 



1 68 The Evolution of Immortality 

tions under review are conducted by, and that 
these reports come from, earnest, sober, cau- 
tious, trained men, of recognized rank in the 
modern scientific world, — much trustworthy 
light being thus thrown upon the heretofore 
dark problem as to the rational possibility of 
the continuance of personal life, and of the 
endlessness thereof, after physical life ceases. 
In fact, these investigations, of which a mere 
hint is given here, go far toward a conclusive 
showing that the etheric body of which we 
are now possessed is the basis of that life and 
consciousness which constitute our present real 
personality ; and that it is in no wise affected, 
as to its real integrity, by the accident of mere 
physical death. 

To-day, then, we are allowed, in the name 
of science, "to cling energetically to the prin- 
ciple of survival, which is presented to us upon 
the double authority of the deductions based 
upon universal tradition, and upon the obser- 
vation of facts." 



Aftermath 169 



Let us not, in our thought, be befogged by- 
words. Science to-day sees energy everywhere 
in the universe. No remotest or minutest bit 
of space anywhere but teems with manifold 
energy. The ether is universal in space, per- 
meating all " bodies " equally with all " space/' 
It is space ; and thus its energy is, likewise, 
coequal with space. 

What, then, is energy ? 

However we may define the word, can its 
ultimate meaning be less than Life ? Energy 
apart from some form of life is inconceivable. 
And, conversely, life apart from some form of 
energy is, also, inconceivable. When therefore 
we speak, in scientific terms, of resolving the 
material universe into ether-energy, we are 
practically resolving it into terms of life ; and 
we may as well say that every remotest and 
every minutest bit of space teems with man- 
ifold life. And we should remember here that 
the word life embraces its psychic forms of 



170 The Evolution of Immortality 

expression, as well as the physical; for "life 
is the subjective side of matter, its personal 
attribute : that property which renders the 
' ion ' a ' psychon.' " To-day we know that this 
remark by a noted biologist is as applicable to 
the ether as it is to any form of matter. 

Life, then, is the one great fact. There is 
no room for death anywhere in God's worlds. 
Death is not, as we have been taught for so 
long a time, "the final law of Nature." Life 
is the law of Nature, and evermore life, as 
modern biology so surely proves ; and it is no 
less the aim and purpose of Nature than it is 
the final outcome of the " Kingdom of God," 
here or elsewhere. We have, like foolish chil- 
dren, mistaken the real significance of Nature's 
processes in achieving her upward transforma- 
tions and correlations of life, and have called 
it "death." This, to the author, seems to be 
the necessary and rational deduction to be 
drawn from an unbiased study of such scientific 
data as the last twenty years have afforded. 



Aftermath 171 



No " creed " of science, however, let it be 
said, can yet be written ; perhaps it never will 
be written in full. But at every stage in its 
advance certain lines of drift or tendency may 
be noted as indicating the trend, more or less 
general, of scientific deduction regarding any 
given subject. 

It is true that a purely negative attitude is 
not normal to the human mind. It must be- 
lieve something, if only in a tentative sense. 
This is especially the fact where, as in this 
case, the origin and destiny of human beings 
is involved. Men and women, the world over, 
are not content, and never will be content, to 
rest in absolute unbelief. Abundant caution 
should therefore be exercised in the weighing 
of evidence. At the same time, one need not 
foreordain himself to the status of positively 
obstinate unbelief simply because the evidence 
falls short of absolute proof. That attitude 
may be the plain badge of weakness rather 
than of mental strength. Candor, open-mind- 



172 The Evolution of Immortality 

edness, is no less a virtue than is strenuous 
caution. A really judicial mind is swayed by 
the preponderance of evidence rather than by 
a preconceived opinion. One needs always to 
be on guard against the conceit of a " superior 
intelligence.'' The special feature, however, 
which marks this age, as compared with the 
past, is the fact that, to-day, foundations of be- 
lief are far more searchingly inquired into, and 
the rational faculty is less easily satisfied. Evi- 
dences of a scientific nature are called for, and 
must be forthcoming, before much credence 
is given to a " faith " that claims to lift the 
veil of the future. This is inevitable and 
well. No lover of his kind would turn back 
the tide. 

It is to be said, however, that no one with 
an observant eye can have failed to note that 
a marked change is taking place in the attitude 
of scientific thought regarding immortality. 
Throughout the world, numbers of men of prac- 
tical scientific training are carefully weighing 
the evidences, pro and con, which these later 



Aftermath 173 

years afford ; and the general verdict is such 
that science, rigid, austere science, can no 
longer be quoted as purely negative in its atti- 
tude. " It may be that a future life awaits 
every human being, but science knows of no 
evidence that it is so," was formerly the almost 
universal voice from the strictly scientific world. 
The note now is very different. Proof, abso- 
lute proof, is lacking ; no one talks of proof ; 
but, considering the question dispassionately 
and comprehensively, from the viewpoint of 
scientific data solely, there exists to-day, it may 
truthfully be said, a body of affirmative evi- 
dence sufficiently strong to warrant a rational 
conclusion that this life does not end all, nor 
lead out into a void of utter darkness. Slowly 
but surely, a new faith is growing up in the 
minds and hearts of men ; a faith born of a 
deeper and saner knowledge of the laws and 
principles that govern this living universe, in 
which and of which we are and must ever be 
a vitally essential part. 

Let the following quotation from the work 



174 The Evolution of Immortality 

of a specialist in biological investigation give 
merely a hint of much of similar character that 
is now available : " Within a normal 1 cell ' of 
living matter there is an expression of energy 
not derived from gravitation, but superior to 
it ; as if emanating from an inner seat of en- 
ergy, as if acting upon matter at a different 
angle or point d' appui. Such an opinion by 
no means conflicts with the monistic concep- 
tion of energy. It is meant merely to set forth 
that life is not the immediate derivative of grav- 
itation, or chemism, . . . but rather a static 
property of matter which antedates gravity, 
and, in the intimate composition of matter, 
outranks it."* 

Furthermore, to pursue now our thought 
along another but related line, it may be said 
that life, while manifesting itself in degrees 
and stages according to the complexity of the 
organism in which it is found embodied, comes 
first of all in man to a clear and perfect con- 

* C. A. Stephens, M.D. : "Natural Salvation." 



Aftermath 175 

sciousness of itself as an individual differenti- 
ation from its parent source. This does not 
imply that intelligence and consciousness, or 
that self-consciousness even, are known only 
to man. The implications based upon the 
broader knowledge of to-day are, rather, that 
all of these qualities, and far more than these, 
inhere in that infinite substratum, the basic 
substance or source from which man has 
come, — from which he is evolved by the in- 
nate differentiating laws that inhere in that 
substratum. 

Man, the child, we trace back to the infi- 
nite substance and its inhering life ; in other 
words, to the Infinite Life. Man's life, then, 
surely cannot rise, in any degree, above its 
source. Whatever is good and divine in 
him inheres also in the substratum that pre- 
cedes him and of which he is. Source or 
cause cannot be less than effect. We may 
reasonably hold, therefore, that man possesses 
enough of the divine impulsion within himself 
to insure, soon or late, harmonious relations 



176 The Evolution of Immortality 

of life with Life. Else how are we to explain 
the ever present, " innate tendency to differ- 
entiate," the impulse to strive, to aspire, which 
seems so universally to characterize all normal, 
healthy life ? It is there, embedded in Nature 
like a fundamental principle, and in some sat- 
isfactory way it must be accounted for in our 
systems of thought. Is it satisfactory to say 
that, after all, we are to strive in vain ? And, 
furthermore, for what are we striving ? Is it 
anything less than an ever ascending scale of 
individual differentiations, an immortality of 
being, separate from but in harmony with uni- 
versal Being ? Immortality, we are told by one 
of our modern specialists in the great field of 
biology, "is what the whole scheme of evolu- 
tion moves forward to ; it is the dream of all 
the longsuffering ages of man " ; and he might 
have added that it is, as well, the unconscious 
dream of all organic life below man. 

Still another line of thought or deduction 
presents itself in connection with the foregoing, 



Aftermath 177 

which may be noted in this connection. To 
many minds faith, however attained, is all-suf- 
ficient. These do not ask for, perhaps do not 
need, a rational basis for their faith. But as 
a result of all the great movements which 
to-day are overturning traditional forms and 
systems of religious belief, there has come a 
wide-spread skepticism, in the public mind, as 
to the validity of the foundations underlying 
the traditional faith in immortality. This is a 
matter-of-fact age. There is little of the poet, 
or of the poetic insight, in it. It lacks, and is 
rather scornful of, either the conscious or un- 
conscious imaginative quality which serves the 
poet so well. Symbolism is vague and mean- 
ingless to it. That which the poetic imagina- 
tion discovers as "most divinely true/' and 
which it seeks to express through the language 
of emblems, the merely intellectual world pro- 
nounces " logically false." 

The intellectual method, so much the fashion 
to-day, possesses, in many ways, very great 
merit ; the modern world is greatly its debtor. 



178 The Evolution of Immortality 

But were the world to limit itself to the intel- 
lectual method alone, it would fail to catch the 
truest aspect of the deeper realities which have 
only to be perceived in order to lift the life, 
awe the soul, and touch the emotions. It re- 
quires no very remarkably high intellectual 
quality to perceive that all its so-called " per- 
fect conceptions " are but the merest shadows 
after all. They always fall short of the larger 
fact. 

The truth is, feeling and imagination must 
be allowed their perfect work in any really in- 
tellectual scheme, while at the same time reason 
has its great part to play. In any future out- 
lining of the new faiths and beliefs that await 
the coming day, the two must combine. The 
head must marry the heart, in that truest and 
most loyal sense which makes of the union a 
divine uplifting of each to a higher plane of 
insight and life. The essential thing is that 
the intellect penetrate deeply, and evermore 
deeply, into the mysteries of Nature; while 
the heart, as it surely will, shall thus rise ever 



Aftermath 1 79 

higher in the realm of a saner imagination 
and truer feeling, being, as it will be, re- 
sponsive to the greater and more far-reach- 
ing knowledge. 

The traditional forms of faith in the survival 
of the soul after death, as indicated by even a 
very large proportion of our present religious 
literary and pulpit utterances, have dwindled 
down to a vague and indefinite "hope." "I 
wish I could believe," it is often sadly said, 
" but I cannot and preserve my intellectual in- 
tegrity." "I cannot believe in an immortal 
life," recently said a highly intellectual wife and 
mother ; " nevertheless, I am frantic to be able 
to do so." This woman, it must be admitted, 
represents to-day a large and rapidly increasing 
class of minds ; and it is little wonder that such 
is the case. The world is in the vortical center 
of one of its vast transitional stages. It sadly, 
and consciously, needs a faith which does not 
run counter to its new intellectual position. 
The foundations of its inherited faith no longer 
answer to the demands of even popular knowl- 



180 The Evolution of Immortality 

edge. Overwhelming doubt and a brooding 
fear have usurped the place of childlike trust. 
The head tries in vain to see and comprehend 
what the heart impels to. For those lacking 
the new scientific insight, great brazen lions 
of misunderstood intellectual fact beset the 
way, and " death " seems but the passing of 
the soul into unavoidable night. Many are 
too honest to evade the doubt, and they face 
it steadily if sternly, loyal above all to the light 
that appeals to their highest conceptions of 
sanity and right judgment. Nevertheless, the 
heart clings, instinctively if despairingly, to the 
vaster hope, so inwrought is it in the deep ex- 
periences and longings of mankind. 

The pathos of the picture ! Scarcely has the 
world before seen the like. And there is a 
shade of grandeur about it ; for, amid its deep- 
est shadows, there glows like a phosphorescent 
light the undying instinct for and devotion to 
truth, however it may seem to affect man's 
preconceived personal holdings. Do we not 
have the history of the race as a sanction for 



Aftermath 1 8 1 



the belief that such loyal following of the 
highest conceptions of truth shall lead out, 
unquestionably, into a larger and fuller light 
and life? 

To meet, then, the world's present temper 
and intellectual attitude, faith in personal im- 
mortality must be reinforced by the affirma- 
tions of a new scripture — the scripture of 
Nature's processes and laws. At the least, a 
rational method must come to the support and 
clarification of the traditional faith. This is 
the undoubted need of the hour. 

And it is coming. The alphabet of the new 
language is already here ; and the task of ar- 
ranging it in order, so as to spell out the new 
gospel — the gospel of physical science — is 
already well under way. Thus, and thus alone, 
shall the head and the heart of mankind again 
be united, and the blossoms of serenity and 
peace spring anew along the pathway of mor- 
tal life. 



1 82 The Evolution of Immortality 

One of the chief intellectual bars to the con- 
ception of the survival of human personality 
beyond this life has already been alluded to, — 
namely, the "disembodied spirit myth," as it 
has been called. Here indeed, in the case of 
the older forms of thought, existed a difficulty 
which the traditional faith alone — the faith of 
dogmatic " authority " — could surmount. The 
day has come, however, when to " faith " may 
be added some elements of " knowledge," to- 
gether with much more which, though indeed 
as yet to be classed as conjecture, may still be 
received as having behind it a large body of 
generally accepted fact. 

It is not difficult to-day, for one who is famil- 
iar with the latest discoveries in physical sci- 
ence, to predict that the time is near at hand 
when this of late rejected stone of the older 
faith will become the chief corner-stone of the 
new. And our theologians will do well to take 
note of this fact, recalling the contemplative in- 
sight accredited to Paul, borrowed from Greek 



Aftermath 183 

philosophy, wherein he, or someone writing in 
his name, saw that there is a " natural body " 
and there is a " spiritual body/' even here and 
now during this present stage of life.* All 
that is needed in amending the New Testament 
conception is to substitute the word " etheric " 
for the word "spiritual," — substantial agree- 
ment with the most modern views at once 
follows. And the agreement will seem all the 
more complete if we bear in mind that the 
"natural body" is composed of what is com- 
monly understood as "matter," and that the 
" ether " forming the " spiritual body " of mod- 
ern apprehension is a finer, more tenuous sub- 
stance, non-material in its phenomena, and, in 
that sense at least, truly " spiritual " ; although, 
at the same time, it must be regarded, and in 
the most real sense, as substance, and therefore 
capable of performing or answering to all the 
demands and functions of body, the subjective 

* It is suggested that the reader recall the analogies cited 
as the basis of the argument presented in the early pages 
of this book. 



184 The Evolution of Immortality 

phase of which is "psychon" — life, conscious- 
ness, mind, personality, "soul." 

Furthermore, it requires to-day no wildly im- 
aginative faculty to enable one to at least begin 
to perceive that in Nature's transformation act 
falsely called death she is simply relieving the 
"natural" body of its functional activity of 
embodying an individual personality, and trans- 
ferring that individual personality to an etheric 
body already present and, at least potentially, 
prepared to receive it. This, no doubt, would 
be a daring assertion to make at the present 
time in any positive way ; yet such assertion 
is being made, and by those who have given 
the most careful attention and comprehensive 
consideration to the latest border-land discov- 
eries in scientific investigation. Such writers 
and seekers have come to understand that the 
word " growth " is an infinitely pregnant evo- 
lutionary term, involving in its processes an 
all-pervasive organizing intelligence as bound- 
less and illimitable as the universe itself. 

When the original of this little volume was 



Aftermath 185 

issued, no attempt was made to show how, in 
accord with natural laws, the transference of 
an individual personality from the " natural " 
body to an ethereal body was or could be con- 
ceived of as rationally possible. The mere 
suggestion of such transference was all that 
the then known facts seemed to warrant. Now, 
however, scientific attainment is broader, the 
problem presents a different aspect, and a wide 
field is opening wherein the " perplexities of 
knowledge " may be brought into freer and far 
more harmonious relations with those world- 
wide intuitions which underlie the "feelings " 
of human experience. 

Here is an inviting field on which the author 
might enter in the immediate connection ; but 
the limitations of a simple Appendix forbid. 
And the present writer turns from it less re- 
luctantly because others have recently dealt 
with it and with allied subjects. 

It is, however, legitimate to say here that a 
glimpse, hinting at the process or manner, may 
be gained by referring to the main analogy 



1 86 The Evolution of Immortality 

dealt with in the first chapters of this volume, 
wherein it is seen that the placental body of an 
evolving embryo, with its functions, is but one 
of a series of bodies, leading up ever to higher 
forms of organized life. It therefore appears 
that the additions of twenty years to meta- 
physical data come in the natural order of evo- 
lution, and have brought.no refutation of such 
implications and logical deductions as are found 
in these pages. On the contrary, the author 
fully believes that the scientific discoveries of 
these later years, together with a rational view 
of their significance and natural implications, 
afford no little reinforcement to the conclu- 
sions and suggestions which seemed to him 
warranted by the available data of twenty 
years ago. 

His conviction therefore remains that, as 
each individual in the past has had, in accord- 
ance with the fundamental laws and principles 
of evolution, a series of successive forms of 
organic existence, unbroken in line of contin- 
uity ; so, by virtue of these same laws, there 



Aftermath 187 

lies before each one of us an unending series, 
an ever expanding or evolving succession of 
individual forms and stages of life, varying from 
this that we now know only as the natural order 
and laws of growth — - the very soul and sub- 
stance of evolution — bring their inevitable and 
unending changes, both in bodily form and com- 
plexity and in psychical activity. He fully be- 
lieves, moreover, that the time is near when it 
will be clearly seen that without the passing 
of the present physical form there could be no 
continuous, progressive life ; that to move out 
of this mortal house of ours is, for every indi- 
vidual soul, a positive condition of growth, and 
no more to be feared than the parting with our 
former placental bodies, which we had out- 
grown and which had become a bar and hin- 
drance to our upward course. 

It is further his belief that it will be dis- 
cerned that there can be no such state or con- 
dition of existence as is implied in the old 
phrase, "disembodied spirit but that there 
are an infinite series of embodiments, one sue- 



1 88 The Evolution of Immortality 

ceeding another in the infinite gradations of a 
finer and more tenuous substance, each grade 
or special form of substance being, by virtue 
of its finer and greater complexity of organiza- 
tion, capable of a higher, finer, and more spirit- 
ual mode of expression, ever approaching, but 
never attaining unto, the full life of Infinite 
Spirit embodied in and manifesting the qual- 
ities of Infinite Substance. 

Dare we face with unawed and unabashed 
countenances such outlook on the destiny of 
humanity ? on our own personal destiny ? 

What does it mean to be called the children 
of God ? 

If children, then are we like unto him, par- 
takers of His nature and being ; inheritors of 
His life ; beginningless, endless. 

This is the ultimate lesson to be learned 
from the simple laws and principles of mod- 
ern biology, of organic evolution ; — simple, 
and yet divine ; infinite in possibility, Godlike 
in their majestic sweep and manifestation. 



Aftermath 1 89 



Necessarily, the presentment here of the 
new metaphysical data now available has been 
fragmentary and discursive — a mere sug- 
gestive outlining of a few phases of a vast 
range of material. A fuller development, 
however, of the writer's more personal views 
may be found in a little volume (1901) entitled 
" New Modes of Thought : The New Material- 
ism and The New Pantheism." 

In closing, he wishes to be permitted to 
quote here the last paragraph of his paper pre- 
sented to the World's Congress of Evolution- 
ists (1893), — published a year later under 
the title of "The Relation of Evolutionary 
Thought to Immortality " : — 

The heart of man has always claimed its 
right to a continuance of personal being ; and 
his best and deepest intuitions have ever as- 
serted the certainty and validity of that claim. 
And reason, searching long and rigidly, bids 
the heart to a hope and trust never so well 
and strongly founded as to-day. It points 



190 The Evolution of Immortality 

toward no heaven of stationary existence, but 
to a continuous life of ever onward and upward 
progress, bound by no limits of growth in all 
the realms of intelligence, power, goodness, 
beauty, truth, and holiness. It points to the 
progressive unfolding of those ethical relations 
and achievements which environ the soul in 
the very atmosphere of all that is blessed and 
satisfying ; and tells us that this life need not 
be waited for until some other world shall em- 
bosom us within its clasp, but that it may be 
entered upon here and now. It bids us trans- 
mute earth into heaven, and enter upon the 
heritage prepared for us from the foundation 
of the world. 



OCT 9 OO* 



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